


what is living is burning

by orphanbeat



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: 1968, Coming Out, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Parent Death, Past Child Abuse, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protests, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 92,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26034355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphanbeat/pseuds/orphanbeat
Summary: Looking at John, watching his hands, seeing the slope of his nose, Paul realizes he wants to kiss him, always has. He wants to tell him, but he’s too afraid. He wonders if it was the other way around between them, would John tell him? Or would this be a change that neither of them could come back from.“I think we’re all changing all the time," John's telling him. "I think we learn things about ourselves every day. And if there are people who don’t like us for trying something new or being someone new, then they can fuck right off, aye?” His smile brightens up a few notches, so Paul feels his own doing the same.“They can fuck right off,” Paul agrees, and where he’d thought he might feel alone, he feels protected and loved, and it fills him up with something good and warm. It makes an ashram in Rishikesh, India feel like home.--In 1968, Paul is publicly outed in a book called The Homosexual's Handbook, written by Angelo D'Arcangelo.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 145
Kudos: 237





	1. chapter one.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, this is a total historical AU, meaning that I’m picking and choosing what piece of history I want to use or ignore lmao. So, there ya go. The most important pieces of new false information is that Brian survives and that they actually went ahead and bought one of the islands they went to see in Greece in 1967. It’s a big project, spearheaded by Brian, until it seems under control and he decides to join the Beatles in India. Also, relationships are still good. Whatever you think might have changed by not losing Brian, probably has. I’m running with that without getting into the nitty-gritty of the details about what exactly has changed historically due to Brian living on, because, trust me, it’s about to get wild lmao
> 
> This is near the end of their stint in India, so in my mind: Ringo + Mo, and Jane, have all already headed back to England for various reasons. Paul and Jane are roughly in the same boat as they were in real life -- rocky, with plenty of underlying issues they haven’t dealt with. John and Cynthia are going through a divorce as amicably as they can, so Cynthia stayed in England with Julian. We’re going to drop right into the middle of things, so I wanted to make sure there was some explanation of where everybody’s at, emotionally.

**April, 1968.**

**Rishikesh, India.**

There’s a song brewing somewhere in Paul’s head and it keeps him from getting to sleep. There are insects and birds outside that he tries to focus on instead, but nothing seems to work. He knows full-well that a good sleep won’t happen until he bats this one out. Sighing, he throws his feet out over the side of the bed, the thick wood floors cool against his bare skin, sending a chill up his spine. 

The bedsprings groan underneath as he gets to his feet and heads straight to his guitar. He glances at his watch and decides it’s too late to call on John. He’ll have to figure this one out on his own. He folds himself down cross-legged on the floor, his guitar in his lap, and he finds the chords deftly. It comes easily, the way all of his songs have in Rishikesh. He thinks it must be the trees, the fresh air, and the running River Ganges somewhere nearby. He’s a nature boy, always has been, it brings out something good in him. Something he likes. 

He closes his eyes, listens to the sound of his own voice and realizes that he likes it. He can’t remember the last time he’s listened to himself this freely. There’s something light about him. There’s something light about them all here. He wishes Richie had stuck around, so he could feel this lightness too. 

The song comes to a close and it makes Paul sigh. He’s felt something physically leave him, a bit of him, out of his chest and down into something that he could share. It warms him from the inside and then warms him from the outside. It exists, so he exists. It makes him feel real and human and loveable in a way that music always has. 

He realizes that all semblance of sleep has left him. The song had made him come alive, open his eyes wide, and he thinks he’d thrum out of his skin if he tried to lie still against a soft mattress. He checks his watch again, does the math for the time in England, and decides that Robert Fraser would still be awake. So, he picks himself up off the floor and heads out to the main building. 

The breeze is fresh and cool; it makes Paul think of his farm in Scotland. He takes a deep breath and realizes that dewy grass smells the same, no matter where you are in the world. It’s a comforting thought. He realizes that midnight grass smells the same in Liverpool too. Always had and always would. It’s something constant, like the moon, the same moon now that he’d looked up at with his mother when they’d gone out to the country when he was a boy. The same moon that he and John had stared at from their hotel balcony in Paris. 

He steps into the compound’s main building and hears someone already on the telephone. As he gets closer, he realizes it’s Brian. He smiles, listens to the way his voice drawls. He’s quite calm, Paul can pick that up from his tone. He sees Brian huddled up against the body of the telephone, his chin resting in one of his hands. 

“That’s marvellous,” he says down the line, then turns, startled by the sound of Paul’s sandals against the hardwood floors. Paul mouths a ‘sorry’ and means to turn back around to give him some privacy, but Brian holds a finger out to him, making him wait. Paul lowers himself down onto the sofa in the room and just  _ waits _ . 

“No, no,” Brian says to the person on the other line. “It’s wonderful news. I’ll let the boys know,” he adds, then offers Paul a spirited smile. It makes Paul immediately smile back at him, an eyebrow cocked in question. “Yes, yes,” Brian continues. He turns his back on Paul and speaks quietly. “Yes, I’m sure I’ll be back in London soon. I’ll call you, Peter, yes, good night, love.” He nods placatingly and Paul thinks he’s gone soft. “Sleep well.”

Brian lays the handset back in the bed of the telephone, turns to Paul, and smiles warmly. He crosses his arms over his chest and Paul doesn’t know why, but his cheeks have gone pink with something. 

“What have you got to tell us, Bri?” Paul asks coyly. 

Brian’s smile grows, then he saunters over to the sofa to join Paul. He sits down on it and Paul feels like they’re back in Brian’s flat on Montagu Square. They sit quite close to one another, always have, but they’ve gotten closer the last few years. So, it’s easy and comfortable when Brian reaches out and picks at a bit of lint on the front of Paul’s kurta. 

“They’ve finished with one of the villas on Lesbos,” Brian tells him, looking proud and excited all at once. Something grows in Paul’s chest too but he isn’t sure if it’s just the way Brian’s smile has made him feel. He realizes it’s Brian’s smile, but it’s John’s too. The way he’d smiled all day on the bow of their rented yacht in Greece, sailing towards something freeing and magical. 

Paul had thought he would hate it: the sun, the island, the concept. He wasn’t sure that he’d ever be able to hold still long enough to exist on some sunny island somewhere. And maybe he can’t, not forever, but he knows he’d feel like a nature boy. He knows he’d feel  _ good _ . About himself, about his mates, about music, about the love that they all shared for one another. 

“Finished?” Paul asks, his voice gone soft and clear. “As in…”

“As in running water,” Brian says. He leans back against the sofa, pulls out a silver cigarette case and lights one for himself. He offers one to Paul too. “A generator for some lights.” He takes a long drag from his cigarette and Paul realizes he must be imagining the sort of man he’d be on a Greek island as well. “Painted walls and furniture.”

“A proper home,” Paul supplies for him. 

Brian shuts his eyes and lets his smile grow. He nods and Paul knows he looks happy, but it makes him sad to think about what Brian thinks of Montagu Square. Does he think of that as a proper home too? “Something of that sort,” Brian mumbles. When he opens his eyes back up, he shifts even closer to Paul. “Peter wants me to see it. Approve it, officially.”

“Not much to approve when the thing’s already finished,” Paul answers, and it makes Brian laugh in a way that Paul feels proud about. 

“No, I suppose not,” he allows. “But I’d still like to see it.”

“You should go,” Paul decides. “You’ve done a lot of work on it. You deserve it.”

Brian sighs. He opens his chest and Paul knows he’s satisfied. He’s put the work in and now he gets to reap the fruits of his labour. He nods; Paul realizes he believes him. It feels good to say and have it mean something. He realizes he wants to say that to John and have it mean something, have him believe him. 

“It might be nice,” Brian says, exhaling a mouthful of smoke languidly. 

Paul likes the way Brian looks when he’s happy; soft and relaxed, confident in a way that will always make Paul dizzy. It’s the sort of confidence of a man eight years his senior; it’s something otherworldly, something in his future. “You’re still happy with us,” Paul observes before he means to say it. 

Brian regards him carefully; there’s the threat of a frown and Paul hates that he’s changed his face that way. “Of course I’m still happy with you,” he tells him. 

Paul nods because he  _ knows _ Brian cares about them, he  _ knows _ he gets something strong and significant from the work and success he’s given all four of them. “I don’t think we told you enough that we need you more than just as a tour manager,” he says and he watches Brian go stoic in front of him. Stoic, then soft. And Paul can’t quite believe how accustomed he’s become to the opposite with John. Stoicism was always followed by anger. But here, with Brian in front of him, it was followed by gratitude. 

“You don’t have to,” Brian says. Paul thinks he might be blushing. “I’m a big boy,” he adds and Paul knows he’d needed to hear it at least once more. 

“I’m just saying --” Paul starts and he’s feeling a blush of his own reaching up to match Brian’s.

“ _ Thank you _ ,” Brian says over him and Paul realizes that he’s flown halfway across the world just for this conversation, and hopefully, hundreds more like it. He’s flown halfway across the world to watch his friends find peace. He hopes that Brian sees the same sort of serenity on his face too. He realizes that that’s all they’ll see when they’re all alone together on Lesbos. They keep their eyes on one another, longer than he might with John or George or Rings, or hell, even Jane. They keep their eyes on one another for so long that Paul thinks he sees something of himself in Brian, and he thinks Brian feels that part of Paul somewhere beneath his skin, too. 

“Anyway,” Brian suddenly says, pressing his fingertips to Paul’s knee. “You were going to make a call,” he says, lifting himself up off the sofa. Paul misses his weight on the cushion next to him immediately. “I didn’t mean to keep you.” Paul finds himself shaking his head, wanting Brian to stay. Brian pauses. He looks down at Paul as if he might want to touch his hair, but he stops himself. “Good night, Paul.”

“Okay,” Paul says back. “You too, Eppy.”

Brian nods, puts out his cigarette and Paul listens to his footsteps retreat until they’re outside and he can’t hear them anymore. Sighing, still feeling light, Paul heads towards the telephone. He dials up Bob and listens to the ringtone. 

“Bob, hi,” Paul says as soon as he hears his friend’s voice. “It’s Paul,” he says, and something shifts between them. Even halfway across the world, over a telephone, Paul can feel the way it’s all changed. His smile falters and he wishes it hadn’t. 

“Paul,” Bob says, trying to catch himself. “I wasn’t expecting your call.”

“I couldn’t sleep and I knew you’d be up,” Paul answers, trying to keep it all light, afloat. Bob hums in response and Paul can’t take it. “Have I missed something? Was I meant to call you earlier and you’ve gone cross with me?”

“No, no,” Bob immediately presses. “I just --...” He takes a deep breath and Paul finds himself holding his own in tandem. “Have you been hearing from anyone in London?”

“Not really,” he allows. “All my mates are here.” He shrugs, then amends: “Jane, maybe. A few times.”

“Jane, right,” he mutters. “Look,” he says, clearing something out of his throat. “I’ve been hearing a bit of a rumour,” he says. 

“We aren’t engaged,” Paul finishes for him, rolling his eyes. 

“No, it’s…”

“What?” Paul demands. “Will you spit it out, Bob?”

“There’s been a book written,” Bob says and Paul doesn’t give him anything else to work off of. He just waits, his silence demanding an answer to what that has got to do with anything. “Well, and you’re mentioned in it, you see.”

“What, like a novel?” Paul asks. “That’s not bad, is it?”

“No, not a novel, it’s…” Paul sighs pointedly and Bob must know he’s painted into a corner. “It’s called  _ The Homosexual’s Handbook.” _ Again, Paul doesn’t say anything. He feels something go tight in his chest and he realizes he couldn’t speak, even if he’d wanted to. “And there’s a bit that lists some celebrity homosexuals.”

“Are  _ you _ on it?” Paul hears himself ask bitterly. 

And he knows that’s all it is: bitter venom. Bob must know it too because he doesn’t entertain the question, he just finishes with: “You’ve made the list, Paul.”

He balks out a laugh, but Bob must hear that it’s frightened him, because he doesn’t laugh back. “Well, I’m not a homosexual,” Paul says, as if that matters; all that matters is that it’s been written. Paul knows that better than just about anyone. 

“No, of course not,” Bob assauges. “Of course you aren’t.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Paul asserts.

“Well, there isn’t one,” Bob stammers. “I suppose there isn’t one. I just thought you should know --”

“Have you seen the book?” Paul asks, which lets them both know that there  _ is _ a problem here, even if Paul doesn’t want to call it one. 

“I haven’t,” Bob concedes. They hang still; there are too many things Paul wants to ask, too many answers that Bob won’t even have for him. His heart is beating wildly in his chest. He suddenly wishes that Brian had stayed. He wants someone here, he wants someone to touch him, to hold his hand, anything, to make this wave of anxiety coursing through him go away. “I don’t think it’s getting much circulation,” Bob tries. “Certainly not outside of specific circles.”

“Do people believe it?” Paul asks and he hates the sound of his own voice. On the same night, he’d realized he’d fallen in love with his own voice, now he can’t stand it.

Bob pauses; it’s something meaningful and terrible. It’s something fundamental: Bob believes it. 

“I don’t know,” Bob says because he must realize that the longer he stays quiet, the more of himself he’s given away. 

Paul tries to remember the last time he’d felt this afraid. He realizes it was when his father had told him that his mother was dead. He feels cold and sick with it. Something like a sob works its way up his throat, but remembers what he’d told himself then:  _ be brave _ . 

“What can I do about it?” he asks, masking his words, making them sound stronger than they are. He’s giving his friend the television treatment, he realizes, but it’s the only way he knows how to survive. “Aye, what can I do, Bob?” He means to laugh, but he isn’t sure what it comes out as. “So, I --”

“Paul --”

“I  _ appreciate _ the concern,” he says over him. “But it’ll all blow over. Things have a way of working themselves out.”

There’s silence on the other line, and Paul wishes that Bob would just learn his lesson: silence gets them nowhere. Silence gets them a quick heartbeat, a bead of sweat down the back of your neck. Silence gets you fear and shame and horrible memories. Keep it loud, and keep it moving. 

“Right,” Bob eventually says. Paul hears him inhale deeply. “How are the lessons, then?” he says, meaning to go elsewhere, but Paul realizes he can’t take Bob’s silence, but he can’t take his pity either, and every word is laced with it. 

“They’re fine,” he answers, and before Bob can ask anything else, he tells him: “Look, I should try to get some sleep. I’ve got to be up early in the morning. That’s enough of a distraction for one night.”

“Okay,” Bob tells him, because he knows the last thing Paul needs is a fight. “Call me tomorrow, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Paul says, but he doesn’t mean it. He hardly realizes he’s said it because all he can think is:  _ I need Brian _ . 

He feels stuck in a vacuum; as he goes, he feels nothing, but can only hear his own ragged breathing and the way his sandals chew deep into the loose gravel. His hands and arms are starting to go numb, like they’re things that don’t even belong to him anymore. Distantly, he knows he’s meant to get a hold of his breathing, center himself on something, let his mind go blank and transcend this wave of anxiety, but he can’t. He doesn’t need transcendental meditation, he doesn’t even need a psychiatrist’s help, he just needs a friend in front of him. 

Brian’s still dressed when he answers the door. He’s smiling; it makes Paul wonder if he hadn’t been totally finished with their conversation when they’d parted either. Paul knows that should make him feel alive and loved, but he mostly just feels afraid. And Brian sees it, because his smile falters and then disappears completely and it’s replaced with an anger Paul’s only seen a few times before. An anger that demands an answer to the question:  _ who hurt you? _

Paul realizes he must tell Brian that something’s happened, but he doesn’t recall the words he’d used to tell him. It happens in a whirlwind: Brian tugs him inside, sits him down on the settee and there is water and some biscuits in front of him. He’s instructed to eat, but he doesn’t have the space between all that fear and anger and shame that’s spilling out from behind his teeth as he lays down exactly what Robert Fraser’s just told him. 

And there’s that stoicism again. But this time, Paul wonders what it will be followed by. Would it still be Brian’s love and gratitude, or would it be something closer to John’s anger and defensiveness. It’s neither, Paul realizes, when Brian offers him a clipped smile that means all business. He reaches out and sets his hand on Paul’s shoulder. His fingers fall perfectly into the curve of the base of his neck. It’s the touch of a friend, finally, and Paul feels himself melt into it, burrow deep inside of it and keep there. 

“Nothing will come of this,” Brian promises. “You’ll see. It will shrink and disappear.”

“Yeah?” Paul asks.

Brian smiles again and this one actually reaches his eyes and Paul’s glad for it. He needs him as so much more than a manager now. He nods reassuringly and then he leans forward and places a soft kiss to Paul’s forehead.

He’s done that before, Paul realizes. On a night they both thought Paul would forget. George’s wedding: he’d been full of joy and full of champagne, an adorably deadly mix on the happiest day of his best mate’s life. Brian had taken him home in a taxi; Cavendish had been big and empty and dark and he’d wanted Brian to stay. He’d kissed him, hard and clumsy, on the lips, and it must have been horrible, because Brian had immediately pushed them apart, muttering soft commands about getting into bed, the way a mother might to a sick child. 

Paul knows he must have said something, but he’d been too drunk to remember what. He hopes it had been something kind, rather than cruel. He supposes it had to be somewhere in the middle because Brian had set him down in his big bed and kissed his forehead, just as he had now. Paul couldn’t remember what they’d said to one another, the alcohol in his system at the time wouldn’t allow for it, but he would always remember the way Brian’s lips felt against his, and that sweet kiss the left him before snuffing the lights and watching Paul pass out before he’d even had the chance to leave the bedroom. 

It hadn’t been the first time Paul had thought about kissing Brian. He’d thought about it when John had told them all Brian was a queer. He’d thought about it in Tenerife when Brian had flown John out to Barcelona. He’d thought about it the night The Who played The Saville Theatre and Brian had taken them all out to Ad Lib.

He realizes he’s thought about kissing John too. A lot. 

He sighs, something heavy with recognition. A  _ practicing _ homosexual, he was not. But he supposes the book must have gotten it half-right. He decides to keep that revelation to himself, though he supposes he knows he shouldn’t. Any information Brian had to combat this would be helpful, but he just doesn’t feel ready to let go of that yet. Brian smiles again, something different, still. Something protective and intuitive and Paul supposes that Brian already knows, anyway.

“Go to bed, Paul,” Brian tells him in a soft, even tone. It reminds Paul of the voices of the gurus in their lessons. He shuts his eyes and can feel something like sleep chasing after him. He nods, filling his lungs up with fresh air and feels new. Brian has made him feel brand new. “We’ll fix this,” Brian adds, before Paul feels Brian’s hands around his own.

He sleeps soundly, caught in a meditation. 

\--

“Will you pass us the salt there, Macca?” John asks over breakfast the following morning, but Paul doesn’t hear him. His eyes are down somewhere on the food in front of him. There’s still something fuzzy coursing through him, something like serenity, but maybe a little darker, too. “Oy, Paul,” John tries again. Before Paul can process that that’s his name being called, an arm reaches in front of him. “Christ, gotta do everything meself around here,” John mumbles, grabbing the salt shaker for himself. 

Across the table, George snickers and Paul feels his cheeks go hot with embarrassment. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Miles away.”

“You lost on the astral plane, or something?” John gripes, shaking some salt into his palm and then dropping it down on his plate. Paul sees George roll his eyes at John then turn to Pattie next to him. Paul knows he ought to make a joke, make this into something lighter, but before he can think of the right thing to say, John asks: “Is it a song, then?” He stops spreading some jam on toast, looks up at Paul questioningly. There’s something behind his eyes, something sparkling, something that hopes it’s a song that he can join in on too. 

Paul smiles, hoping to match that spark, too. It isn’t a song that’s grabbed a hold of him, but he suddenly remembers the tune he’d banked out last night. He leans forward, John does too. They’re both smiling as though this is some giant conspiracy. “I started one last night,” Paul allows. “It came so easy.”

“I did too,” John tells him. He shrugs, smiling wider. “You know, I bet it’s the nature, you know. The big open spaces. It’s opened a door or something.”

“You’re expanding your mind,” George suddenly tells them both. He might be glowering, and it makes Paul feel like he’s been caught whispering with a mate at school. “You think you could use that for something other than writing songs?”

“Oh, aye, George,” John immediately answers. He leans away from Paul, returns to his meal. “I use it for record sleeve design ideas, fashion choices, I’m sure --”

“I just wish you’d take it more seriously --”

“Writing songs  _ is _ serious,” John pokes back. George sighs, minutely shakes his head, and Paul realizes that they’ve hit a bypass. “If I can’t use this for that, then what’s the point?”

“Lots of things,” George insists. 

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” George says, glancing at Pattie for some sort of answer, but she has nothing to say. “Peace --”

“ _ Peace _ ?” John balks. He shakes his head, smiling cruelly. Paul knows he ought to intervene, but he hates to be the scapegoat John gets to take this anger out on. “You wanna talk about peace now, do you?” George rolls his eyes again, he must know what’s coming, same as Paul. “Where was that with all those reporters asking about Vietnam, I stuck my neck out for what I thought was right, nobody else did anything,” John hisses, even throwing a glance at Paul so he knows he’s included in this. 

“Sod it, John, honestly,” George mutters, looking away from him, shaking his head, intimating that this is over, but nothing’s over until John says it is, or until Paul convinces him that it is. 

So, Paul does what he does best: “Alright, chaps,” he mitigates. “It isn’t even --” he throws a glance down at his wristwatch, “ -- half-eight, yet. Can we save the rows for at least ten in the morning, please?”

“Yeah, alright,  _ Brian _ ,” John mumbles. He sighs, then throws a glance across the table to George. It’s something of a peace offering, but George doesn’t look back at him. It must make him feel guilty because he decides to change the subject. “Where is Eppy, anyway?” He sits up a little straighter, looks out over the tables to find their manager’s face, but he comes up empty. “He’s not really the lie-in type.”

Something goes cold in Paul’s chest. Brian  _ isn’t _ the lie-in type. He takes a look around himself too, also coming up empty. He swallows hard, tries to imagine Brian relaxing out front of his ashram, or down by the banks of the small river running through the camp. He tries to imagine him anywhere other than the telephone in the main building, on the line with London, unable to put out a fire in a homosexual’s handbook. 

“Dunno,” George offers with an idle shrug. Now, it’s his turn to throw a glance across the table to John and things fall back into something easy and steady between them. And Paul can’t stand it. He can’t stand being on the outside of it. 

“I’m finished,” Paul suddenly announces. He’s standing before John can even take a look at his still half-full plate, then up at him with concern. “I’ll find him.”

“You don’t have to,” John tries, but it’s said mostly to the back of Paul’s head as he leaves the communal dining tables. “I’m sure he’s fine!” John calls after him, but Paul doesn’t listen. 

It isn’t about Brian anyway. 

The breeze is still fresh and still cool, but it’s all gone wrong. Paul tries to think of his farm in Scotland, or the vacation homes he’d gone to with his family up in the country. He tries to zero in on the smell of early-morning, dew-covered grass. It had been such a comfort last night to know that that same smell could find him anywhere. Now, the thought just made him sick. 

He knocks on Brian’s ashram, sees the way his own hand’s shaking, and can’t wait: he pushes the door open, steps inside, and… the ashram’s nearly packed. And there’s Brian, at the foot of the bed, shoving the last few of his things into a suitcase. He glances at Paul, then must realize who it is, because he freezes. And they just stand there, looking at one another. Paul feels his chest start to heave up and down, his breath sticking in his throat, not making its way out through his nose. It’s just stuck there, filling him up, making it harder and harder to find any oxygen.

“Paul,” Brian mutters, his voice soft and apologetic. “I didn’t hear you knocking, I’m sorry --”

“Where you going, Bri?” Paul asks.

Brian sighs, Paul can see his shoulders drop. He shuts his case carefully, running a finger along the zip because, Paul realizes, he can’t look at him. “I’ve got to be in London,” he says, keeping his eyes down on the deep brown leathers of his travelling case. 

Paul takes a deep breath, already feeling himself chewing a hole through his bottom lip. “What for?” he asks, though they both know full-well what for. 

Brian sighs; the truth pains him, so he avoids until the last possible moment. Instead of giving Paul a proper answer, he approaches him, sets his hands on both of Paul’s shoulders, then lets himself rub down Paul’s arms -- his bicep, then his forearm -- until they’re holding hands. “It’s more serious than I thought,” Brian says to him gently. Paul feels him squeeze his hands and he’s glad for it because he thinks he could fall away if he didn’t have somebody to hold onto. “I’ve got to be there and make this go away myself.” Paul nods, and again, Brian squeezes his hands, but this time, it’s something a little more urgent. It’s demanding Paul to look at him, so he does. “Before I go, I need you to tell me something,” he says. Paul shrugs, meaning  _ anything _ ,  _ I’ll tell you anything _ . Brian inhales deeply and Paul suddenly doesn’t want to hear what he has to say: “Is there anyone who I need to ask for their  _ discretion _ ?”

Paul feels his knee buckle under the weight of it. For such a business-as-usual question, it sure has a hell of a lot to say: Brian believes this could be true, Brian believes there may be men out there that Paul’s kissed or slept with, Brian believes he has to  _ pay _ these men for their silence. “It isn’t  _ true _ ,” Paul insists, before he realizes he hasn’t answered the question. And Brian knows he hasn’t. They catch one another’s eye, something passes between them, Paul suddenly remembers how it feels to have Brian’s lips against his own, so he amends: “You.” He shakes his head. “If you want to get technical, just you.”

A smile tugs at the corner of Brian’s mouth, but he must know it isn’t appropriate, because he looks away from Paul and nods. “If that kiss is the only homosexual act you’re guilty of, then that secret’s certainly safe with me.”

Paul feels himself laugh and it makes Brian look back at him and smile. He reaches out and pushes some hair off of Paul’s forehead, then seems to go a bit more serious: something protective passes over him and Paul realizes it’s because Brian sees something of himself in him. He’s staunchly aware of the truth: just because Paul hasn’t kissed any other men, doesn’t mean he hasn’t wanted to. 

“Should I come with you?” Paul asks, suddenly aware how out of his hands this whole thing will be if he stays.

Brian immediately shakes his head, meaning to look unconcerned, but Paul can’t see him as anything but the opposite. But, he supposes Brian knows best. “I think you should carry on here,” Brian explains to him. “It may appear we’re working too hard if you come with me.”

“Right,” Paul manages. “Should I tell the lads?”

Brian shrugs plaintively. “I suppose that’s up to you.” Paul nods, but Brian must know that that prospect frightens him because he tugs at Paul’s sleeve and when Paul can actually look at him, he smiles. “We’ve been dealt worse.”

Paul nods again, then hugs himself against Brian before he can convince himself not to. Brian holds him right back, then, just like his father might, he unfurls Paul from his chest carefully and smiles down at him reassuringly. “You’re alright,” he tells him and Paul thinks he might learn to believe him. 

He isn’t able to clear his mind during the day’s lessons. He thinks of Brian on the plane back to London. He thinks of Robert Fraser, his ear to the ground, listening for anything that might be amiss. He thinks of… Jane. He prays to whatever newfound belief system he has that the rumour hasn’t reached her. He’s only ten minutes into a meditation when he realizes that Brian and Bob have something in common: their queerness. Their circles had to be similar. If Bob was hearing things and Brian was hearing things, it didn’t necessarily mean that it was circulating beyond them: other men who liked men. 

He supposes he could call Jane and feel out if she’s heard any strange rumblings about them and their relationship, but that seems too risky. He realizes Rich has been back in London for over a month now and decides that he’d be the one that Paul would ask. If the press were under the impression one of the Beatles might be participating in some rather illicit affairs, who else might they ask but another Beatle?

He slinks back to the main building as the others file off for some lunch and he rings London. 

“Rich!” he says as soon as he hears his friend’s voice. He’s just glad to have caught him. “You’re home, great.”

“Of course I’m home,” Rings says back. “It’s nine in the morning.”

Paul glances back down at his watch and realizes he hadn’t considered the time difference. “Shit,” he mutters. “I didn’t wake you, did I? Or the kids?”

“No, no,” Rich answers. He sighs, must be getting himself comfortable in a chair somewhere. Paul can hear him munching on some breakfast. “They’re always up at the crack of dawn.”

“No rest for the wicked?”

“That’s the truth,” Rich hums. “You bored, or something?” he asks. “Haven’t you got lessons?”

“We stopped for lunch,” Paul explains. Then, he shrugs. “I am a bit bored, I suppose. It’s all a bit serious, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Ringo asks with a sarcastic laugh. “Still? They haven’t gone off it yet?”

Paul laughs back. “I think John might have,” he muses. “Or will quite shortly. George is still keen.”

“That sounds right,” Rich says, and Paul realizes that this is easy. There isn’t any tension between them, no secret that Ringo is holding back; it feels nothing like his phone call with Robert Fraser. He supposes he could safely assume that Rich hasn’t heard anything about the bloody book. But, for his own peace of mind, he still feels he has to ask. 

“How’s London, then?” he tries. “What rumours have the press come up with while we’ve been away?”

“Well,” Rich answers. “You and Jane are married,” he teases. “Or was it divorced? I can’t remember. John’s been thrown in prison, last I heard.” Paul laughs again and feels himself relax. 

“Right,” he says. “So, just the regular shite.”

“Just the regular shite,” Ringo confirms. “You think you’ll be coming home soon?” He misses them, Paul realizes. It makes him want to leave right now. 

“Yeah, I reckon,” he answers and he can hear the way it makes Ringo smile. 

“We’ll have you and Jane over for dinner, then,” Ringo concludes. 

“Yeah,” Paul says, though he’s had a hard time imagining what he and Jane’s relationship might look like after this trip. They’d fought before they’d flown out here and spent a lot of time bickering in their ashram. It was all a bit stilted. Homosexual rumour or no homosexual rumour, he often wondered if it was something they could salvage. 

“You’ve been out all day,” John tells him that night, when they’re back in John’s ashram with two guitars between them. Paul glances up at him, hums a noise that’s asking for more of an explanation. Keeping his eyes down, afraid that Paul might reject his invitation to open up, John just shrugs. “You’re just not all here, is all. Not during the lesson and not now.” Finally, John looks up at him. His eyes are openly concerned and vulnerable behind his glasses. He gets like that when they’re alone in a room together. 

“Oh,” Paul answers dumbly. 

“Is everything alright?” John asks, deciding to bite the bullet. 

Paul feels himself go still and John doesn’t look away from him. Paul shrugs, thinks he’d like to tell John everything, but there’s something inside of him that is begging him to keep his bloody mouth shut. “Well, everything’s fine, innit?” he mumbles. 

“Is it?” John counters. He shrugs, then returns his focus down to the guitar in his lap. He picks at a few strings, something of a song building somewhere behind his eyes. Paul watches him; watches start to go a hundred miles away, and he realizes he’s just pushed him to do so. And he wants John close. Whatever’s waiting for him in London, he wants John close for it. 

“I suppose I --...” He stops short and it gives John pause. His fingers slow to nothing on the guitar, then his eyes flicker up to Paul’s and he just  _ waits _ . “I suppose I’m just nervous about going home.”

John narrows his eyes at him. He hugs the body of his guitar to his chest and leans forward, watching Paul carefully over the rim of his glasses. “Why would you be nervous to go home?” Paul shrugs and now it’s his turn to look back down at his guitar and tinker at a few notes. “I might be buzzing to get home, actually.”

“Are you?”

John smiles and shrugs. “Dunno,” he mumbles. “That English countryside, you know,” he drawls on sarcastically. “Better landscapes than here, don’t you reckon?”

Paul laughs. “Ya daft, mate.”

“No, no,” John amends. “I miss the kid, I think.” It isn’t what Paul had been expecting; it makes him go warm. “The studio,” he adds, to soften the vulnerability he’s just offered. “We’ve got more than an album here, you know.”

“Yeah,” Paul agrees, counting off the songs he’s got in his head. He knows John’s got a similar number. 

“You’re nervous?  _ Really _ ?” John presses. 

Paul shrugs and he realizes that John’s brought up Julian to clear the floor for something stark from Paul too, and Paul  _ knows _ what John should hear, but he can’t manage it. He can’t manage it forthright, so he tiptoes around it instead. He inhales deeply and says: “We’ll just be different, I suppose.” John nods, urging Paul to continue. “Some people don’t like it when you’re not something they thought you were.” John scoffs, but it isn’t something cruel. It isn’t even directed at Paul; it’s directed at the truth of the statement. He looks away and Paul wishes he wouldn’t. He wants John to look directly at him, see everything, so Paul doesn’t have to tell him. 

Looking at John, watching his hands, seeing the slope of his nose, he realizes that both he and Brian had been right in their revelation: just because Paul hadn’t kissed any other men, never meant he didn’t want to. He wants to kiss John, always has. He wants to  _ tell him _ , but he’s too afraid. He wonders if it was the other way around between them, would John tell him? Would John just kiss him, without having to tell him?

“Well, sod ‘em, Macca. Right?”

“Right,” Paul allows, but he can tell he hasn’t convinced his mate. “I just --... What if it’s just something big, you know? A difference you can’t come back from, maybe.”

“What are you on about?” John asks, meaning to sound casual, but Paul can see it for what it is: uncertainty, concern, care -- you name it, John’s felt it for him. 

Paul feels himself start to blush. He doesn’t know how to explain what he means without giving himself away. He suddenly wishes he hadn’t said anything at all. “You wouldn’t hate someone just because you found out something about them had changed?”

John shrugs, gives Paul a pointedly annoyed look. “I think that’s a vague question,” he says. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On what had changed, I don’t know,” John says, shrugging helplessly. It’s been a long time since Paul’s felt younger than John, but he feels that way now: inarticulate, unconfident, and stupid. “You know, you can’t just ask me that and expect an answer,” John rants. “Say I’d found you had killed somebody, cold-blooded, you know. That might change a few things --” 

He balks a laugh, so Paul interrupts him with: “That isn’t what I mean --”

“Then  _ say _ what you mean, Paul,” John urges him. Paul sighs heavily, annoyed with himself more than he is with John, and John must realize it, because then he shrugs. “There aren’t many things that would make me turn away from somebody.”

And that sounds hopeful, so Paul says: “Yeah?”

“Well, yeah,” John answers. “I mean, I think we’re all changing all the time. I think we learn things about ourselves every day,” he continues, and he means it as much about himself as he does whatever he thinks Paul might mean. “We’re just trying to better ourselves, aren’t we, Paulie?” He offers Paul a smile and Paul finally feels like he can breathe. “And if there are people who don’t like us for trying something new or  _ being someone new _ , then they can fuck right off, aye?” His smile brightens up a few notches, so Paul feels his own doing the same. 

“They can fuck  _ right _ off,” Paul agrees, and where he’d thought he might feel alone, he feels protected and loved, and it fills him up with something good and warm. It makes an ashram in Rishikesh, India feel like home. 

“I’m knackered,” John suddenly decides, his words punctuated by a yawn. He sets his guitar down on the bed next to him and stretches his palms up towards the ceiling. “You finished with these?” he asks, tapping the wood body of Paul’s guitar. 

“Yes,” Paul answers quietly. 

Nodding, John stands and heads over to his wardrobe. He pulls open the top drawer, finds himself a t-shirt to sleep in, then he pauses, looks over his shoulder back at Paul and holds it out to him. “You wanna stay here?” he asks. The breath catches in Paul’s throat because he  _ doesn’t _ want to be alone and John’s seen it. He’s seen it and he’s doing something about it. “You find it quiet now that Jane’s gone?”

“Sort of,” Paul allows. 

John nods, then fishes out a second t-shirt for himself. He saunters back towards the bed and drops himself down on the edge. He tosses the thin shirt at Paul, smiling when it hits him in the nose. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a bed by meself since I was eighteen,” he says with a bemused smile; then, it quietly falters and Paul suddenly sees the way a broken marriage is hitting him. Hitting  _ Cynthia _ and  _ Julian _ . “I don’t like it,” he concludes. 

“I don’t like it either,” Paul reassures him. 

John smiles at him; it’s small, but Paul sees the graciousness in it. He nods, then turns away from Paul and peels out of his kurta. Paul catches the smattering of freckles across John’s back and shoulders before he realizes that he ought to look away and give him some privacy. He turns away; they’re mirror images of one another as they both slip into their sleep clothes. 

Then, the lights are flicked off and John’s under the covers first, tugging the blanket up to his chin. It gets cooler at night than either of them expected. Paul climbs in next to him; they both shift closer to one another feigning an attempt at getting comfortable. John rolls onto his side, his back to Paul, and Paul listens to him sigh contentedly. It makes him smile, so he shuts his eyes, and actually thinks sleep might reach him. He hadn’t thought that would happen the way his morning had gone. 

Somewhere, Paul isn’t sure if he’s half-asleep, or fully awake, he isn’t sure of the same about John either, but he feels John kick his foot out towards him, knocking their ankles together. He holds there, his foot pressed up against Paul.  _ He’s there _ . If Paul knows nothing else in this world, he knows that  _ John is there _ . 


	2. chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> join me on tumblr @orphanbeat!

It’s warmer than it ought to be when Paul wakes up the following morning. He’d been freezing all night, he shouldn’t feel this bloody warm. Before he opens his eyes, he can feel a beam of sunlight in his eyes. They’d forgotten to draw the curtains and Paul grumbles about it. He means to roll away from the bright light, but finds he can’t. One of John’s legs is interlocked between his own and his left arm is casually thrown across Paul’s middle. 

Paul sneaks a glance: John’s nose is pressed in the space between Paul’s shoulder and the pillow, his long hair is a mess atop his head. He hasn’t stirred and Paul’s glad for it. He looks so quiet when he sleeps, something soft and light. It’s the closest Paul will ever come to seeing him as a young boy. He cranes his neck further, trying to see more, but it’s too much movement. It nudges John awake. Paul hears him take in a deep breath, watches him as he starts to nuzzle deeper into the pillow. One eye opens and Paul realizes John’s caught him looking. 

He peels himself out of the bed. It’s embarrassed and ungraceful and Paul looks away when he realizes he’s made John feel like he’s done something wrong. John props up on his elbow, watching Paul through still-bleary eyes, and he sees just how far he’s wriggled over to Paul’s side of the bed in his sleep. He shifts back towards his edge, his eyes pointedly down on the sheets in front of him and his jaw set in some sort of self-directed anger. 

“We forgot to draw the curtains,” Paul says dumbly from where he stands. He goes to the window and pulls them shut, giving them a little more darkness in the bright early morning. 

John looks up at him, but he’s deliberately unreadable. Paul realizes that John can barely see him across the distance between them without his glasses, but Paul can’t see John either, not really. Not the John who offered him the t-shirt that Paul’s still wearing. Then, John swings his legs over the edge of the bed, his back to Paul and says: “You afraid someone’ll get the wrong idea about us, or something?” and it makes Paul’s blood run cold. 

“No,” Paul manages, but he realizes  _ he is _ . 

“Nothing to get the wrong idea about, is there?” John asks. He glances over his shoulder at Paul and he’s waiting for something: an affirmation, a denial, and Paul realizes that, in this moment, John would take either. 

Years stretch out between them and Paul wonders if John’s known all along how much Paul wants to kiss him. He wonders if he’d recognized it in Woolton, or in Hamburg, or Paris, London, New York. Did he recognize it in Florida? Or, in Paul’s back garden on Cavendish? If he has, he’s certainly never breathed a word of it, at least in not so open terms. Paul realizes he  _ still _ can’t see John. He can’t read him, he can’t understand what he’s  _ really _ asking. And with his own name in a book called  _ The Homosexual’s Handbook _ , he can’t risk being so bold. 

What if he admits to seeing the thing between them, to feeling it, to nurturing it himself, and John finds out the sort of man he actually is? What would happen to the thing between them? John would bury it; he’d be afraid and he’d bury it. It isn’t until after Paul says: “No, of course not,” that he realizes he’s just buried it too. 

John nods and Paul watches him head to the wardrobe. He pulls open a drawer and fishes out a kurta for himself. “You hungry?” he asks into the fabrics. Paul realizes John isn’t fishing one out for him as well, this time. “I’m starving,” he says, and Paul realizes that the conversation is over. 

\--

They’re halfway through the morning lessons, when one of the yogis presses their hand to Paul’s shoulder gently. His head’s gone swimming; for a moment, he doesn’t realize who it is who’s touched him. He realizes he knows who it  _ isn’t _ : it isn’t John. Slowly, he opens his eyes, glances up at the man hovering over him. The man offers him a sympathetic smile and tells him: “Telephone.”

Paul furrows his brow. “Pardon?” he whispers. 

“There’s a telephone call for you,” the man says, and Paul realizes he must be repeating himself. “We were told it was urgent.”

“Urgent?” Paul parrots back. He starts to stand, stumbles slightly with the way his legs have gone numb. A few pupils ahead of him, he sees John twist at the middle, watching him. Their eyes meet just for a moment, but it’s long enough for John to realize that something’s wrong. Paul looks away: “Do you know who it is?”

“Your friend,” the man explains. “The one that was here,” he continues, and Paul realizes that all three options can’t be good. Not with the word ‘urgent’ acting like a bullhorn in the back of his mind.  _ Rich, Jane, Brian _ . It’s all bad. But there’s one in particular…

“Is it Brian?” Paul asks. 

Recognition dawns on the man’s face -- putting a name to the English man who’d been here, learned his lessons, and had gone. He smiles and nods. “Yes, Brian,” he confirms, and Paul brushes past him before he realizes he hasn’t said ‘thank you’. He feels John’s eyes on his back for as long as John can manage. 

Paul picks up the telephone and feels as though it’s burning him. “Bri?” he says down the line, and he’s met with silence. It makes his heart jump into his throat. He means to poke again, but then Brian’s voice comes down the line: “Paul,” he says gently. He sighs, as though he’s glad to hear him, as though there might have been a reason that he might not be able to reach him. “I’m sorry to pull you from your lessons.”

“What’s wrong, Eppy?” Paul asks; his voice wavers, but it’s firm. 

Paul can hear Brian take a deep breath in, even with all the miles between them. It makes Paul take in a deep breath of his own. “I think you should come to London,” Brian tells him cryptically. 

“Why?” Paul manages, because he just wishes Brian would tell him like it is. He isn’t the boy who Brian had first met at the Cavern; he doesn’t need his protection the way he had then, or even years later in the United States when every American had hated them. He doesn’t need Brian to soften the truth, he doesn’t need him to lie. 

He says it as though it pains him. It’s a horrible admission, and one Brian never wanted to breathe life into: “I’m afraid I haven’t been able to silence this as much as I’d have liked.” Paul exhales sharply. “I think it would be best if you were here, so we could come up with a plan of action.” The words are business-as-usual, but they feel charged and dangerous.

“Is it bad?” Paul asks. 

There’s a moment of pause on the other line and it’s as much of an answer as Paul needs. “I want to get ahead of it,” Brian assures him. “Your friend was right, the book isn’t circulating much outside of very specific circles,” he explains, and it makes Paul sad that Brian won’t even say the word that best describes him; it makes Paul sad that he doesn’t even want to hear Brian say it, either.  _ Queer _ . It’s a word he hasn’t learned to live with yet. “But, Paul, there’s... “ Paul holds his breath. “I’m sorry, but there’s a definite buzz.”

Paul feels his shoulders droop; he feels every part of him go a bit cold, and he realizes that there isn’t anything he wants more than to be with Brian, to be with a man like him. He’s afraid that he’ll feel alone here. So distant and different that even John wouldn’t be able to pull him back. “Okay,” he says, both defeat and relief lacing through such a short and simple word. “How do I --...” He shuts his eyes, shakes his head at himself. He can’t remember the last time he’d bought himself a plane ticket. He feels his cheeks go warm. How pathetic… He realizes he can’t lose the life around him. This book -- this  _ thing _ about him -- can’t take away the things he’s worked so hard for, the people he’s loved and held dear. He’d be lost without it all. 

“I’ve had Mal call ahead for your ticket,” Brian soothes. Paul finds himself nodding. “He’ll fly back with you,” he adds, and Paul feels as safe as though that giant teddy bear, Malcolm Evans, was right next to him. “He’s hiring a car to bring the both of you to the airport in New Dehli. Go to your ashram, Paul,” Brian instructs. “Pack your things, and Mal will get you when everything’s been sorted.”

He feels so taken care of that there are tears in his eyes. He’s still nodding along with everything Brian’s saying, feeling sturdy, protective hands all over him. “Okay,” Paul says, and Brian must hear the lump in his throat, because he says: “Okay, Paul,” in a tone that sounds like his father. It’s something so loving and determined and Paul can’t believe it’s been directed at him. 

“Brian,” he says, before Brian can cut the line. “Thank you.”

“You’ll be alright,” Brian says to him, and Paul realizes that Brian’s heard what Paul’s gratitude had really meant:  _ I’m terrified. _

Brian lets Paul hang up first, wants him to know that he isn’t leaving him. He feels his hands shaking even before he sets the phone back into its body. He can’t remember the trip back to his ashram, but he’s suddenly surrounded by four walls, his hands carding through all the shirts he’s bought and forgotten about. He stuffs them as deep into his suitcase as he can manage. The fabrics all blur into one and he realizes it’s because he’s crying. There are breaths catching in his throat and he realizes he doesn’t want to be anywhere: he doesn't want to be in Rishikesh, he doesn’t want to be in London, he doesn’t even want to be in his own body. 

He has to give himself a moment. He drops his hands down to his side and takes one heaving breath, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hands. “Christ --” he mutters. He means to berate himself a bit more, but then there’s a voice in the doorway of his ashram. 

It’s John. Of course, it’s John.

“You’re leaving?” he asks. There’s something defensive about his tone: something angry and abandoned, and it makes Paul go so jittery that he can’t bring himself to feel sorry for making John feel that way. He looks up at John, and John goes soft. Paul realizes his eyes must be puffy and red-rimmed. He returns to his case, stuffing more shirts deep inside of it, hardly bothering to fold anything properly. He hears John shuffle deeper into the ashram. “Paul?” he asks again, but now his voice is so low, it’s hardly above a whisper.

Paul shakes his head because he doesn’t trust the sound of his own voice. He sees John approach the bed in his periphery, sees him taking it slow, like Paul was some skittish animal who might run or lash out if he makes any fast moves. Then, John’s hand is on top of one of his and it makes him go still. 

“Paul,” John tries again, and Paul thinks his voice sounds like music: calming and rooting; it’s familiar and cosmic. “What’s happened? Who was that on the phone?”

“It was Brian,” Paul tells him, trying to sound strong and even, but he knows he just sounds afraid. John blanches, and he doesn’t put words to the question looming large over him:  _ who died? _ Paul shakes his head at him. “It’s not --...” He shuts his eyes tight and drops his forehead into his hand. An exasperated breath escapes through his teeth before he feels John tug at his sleeve. “Everybody’s fine,” he sighs out. “It’s just --...” John tugs at his sleeve again. “There’s this stupid bleeding story about me,” he blurts out. “A rumour in London. Brian wants me home to figure it out.”

John goes stiff, but he keeps his fingers at Paul’s wrist. “What kind of story?” he asks. 

Paul pulls his hand away from John, returns to his case, and he  _ feels _ the way his cheeks have gone bright pink. “It’s nothing, John, honestly,” he tells him, grabbing another of his shirts, stuffing it into his case with a little too much force. John watches him gingerly, noticing the way Paul’s knuckles have gone white around the thin fabric in his hands, the way his back has gone taut, the way his eyes can look everywhere in the room, but back at John. 

Paul heads to the closet, tears a few of the jackets there off their hangers. When he turns back towards the bed, he sees that John’s thrown his case shut, he’s got his hand overtop of it, barricading Paul from doing anything else. Paul keeps his eyes locked down on John’s slim fingers on top of leather. “Why won’t you look at me?” John demands. His voice shudders, as though Paul never looking at him again might frighten him more than anything in the world. Paul starts to shake his head, but John’s voice booms out and makes him stop: “Look at me, Paul, and tell me what’s happened.”

Paul realizes he can’t move. He feels frozen in place and he realizes, maybe it’s because he  _ wants _ to tell John. He wants to let John inside, fill him up with something warm so his joints can start to bend again, the way they’re meant to. “You won’t believe it,” he mutters. John stays where he is, doesn’t open his mouth to dignify that with a response. He just waits. 

There’s still some courage deep down somewhere because Paul finds he can finally actually meet John’s eye. The world falls out around them. For the second time that morning, years pass between them. There’s a home in the way they exist in the world: alone, together. It makes Paul feel like he isn’t in Rishikesh, that he won’t be in London, that he isn’t even  _ inside his own body _ . They’ve gone somewhere: alone, together. “Someone’s published a book,” Paul tells him. “And I’m in it. It says I’m a homosexual.” John stands up a little broader. “Brian’s afraid it could be damaging.”

Standing tall, Paul realizes it’s just a front: John’s gone nervous. A quiet moment passes, then John is first to look away and Paul can’t stand it. He doesn’t know why that might have made John not be able to look at him. Something goes cold inside of him and he realizes he’s back in Rishikesh, India, and there’s nothing holding him and John together anymore. “Well, it’s not true,” John says, shrugging.

“No,” Paul answers, before he realizes he’d wanted to lie. 

John just shrugs again. “Then, it’s easy to dismiss.”

Paul answers with: “Brian wants me back in London,” because they both have to know that there won’t be anything easy about this. John’s eyes flicker back to Paul’s and he must see that the whole thing’s got him running scared because he steps closer to Paul and Paul can finally read him again: there’s resolution in his eyes. 

“I’ll come with you,” he says. Everything about him sags when Paul shakes his head at him. 

“You shouldn’t,” Paul tells him, imagining the both of them getting off the plane in London, a homosexual rumour swirling somewhere above them: Paul knows what everyone would think. They’ve already thought it about the two of them for years, now they would just have reason to put words to their suspicions. John doesn’t need that. Cynthia and Julian, they don’t  _ deserve _ it. John narrows his eyes at him, so Paul adds: “Besides, Mal’s already bought the tickets, it’s just me and him.” John shakes his head, so Paul steps towards him. “You should stay here,” he tells him fervently. “We ought to act as though everything’s normal.”

“That’s shite, I want to --” John tries again, but stops short when Paul closes the space between them, wraps a hand tight around his wrist. Between them, ever since they were kids, that’s always meant one thing:  _ stop. _

“Everything will be fine,” Paul promises him. “You know how Brian gets,” he tries. “You’ll see, he’s just being careful.” John looks up at him. Paul hears his voice in his head:  _ But you’re afraid _ , and he knows John’s caught him for a liar. Paul keeps their eyes square, steps closer to John, and sees his friend soften. Paul wants to kiss him, God, he always wants to kiss him. He thinks if John would just let him kiss him, they’d both live a little easier. “I’m meeting with him as soon as I land. I’ll call you, and I’ll tell you everything’s fine.”

They stand off: their eyes on one another. Paul sees John’s head running away with him, it’s moving so fast that Paul can’t even track it. He worries that he hasn’t been able to get through to him, but then, slowly, John starts to nod. He swallows hard and looks down at the floorboards between them. “Eppy does always seem to go a bit overboard,” he allows.

Paul nods, but he sees it for what it actually is: John’s giving him an out, he isn’t admitting belief to anything. “Yeah,” Paul agrees, but he really means to say thank you, and John must hear it because he offers him a weak, rueful smile. 

“I’ll go a bit barmy without you here,” he says and it’s the most honest, clear thing he’s said since he walked into Paul’s ashram. Paul smiles back at him. “George’ll never write a song with me here, what am I meant to do?”

“Self-improve, I suppose,” Paul answers with a chuckle and John laughs too, glad that they still can, despite the hastily-packed case between them. 

“Cor,” John mutters. “Can you imagine? Me: improved? Better and liking myself for it?” He laughs again, but Paul can’t match him. “You wouldn’t even recognize me.”

Paul means to tell him that he would: that he’d recognize him and love him even more for it. But there’s a tight rap on the door to Paul’s ashram and when he looks, it’s Mal waiting there, his eyes wide and apologetic. “Sorry to interrupt, lads,” he mutters. Paul shakes his head at him, beckoning him inside. John takes his cue, he steps away from Paul, steps away from the case, and lets Paul open it again. 

“I’m just about packed, Mal,” Paul tells him and it gets him a clipped smile in return. Mal stands awkwardly somewhere to the side of the ashram and John must realize that there isn’t a chance of anything else of any depth passing between them, so he whispers: “Do you need any help? I’ll be off, if…”

“No,” Paul tells him graciously. “I’m good, John, love.”

John nods, takes a step towards the door, and pauses. He looks over his shoulder and confirms: “You’ll call me, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Paul promises. 

John nods. He gives Mal a meaningful pat on the shoulder and he leaves the ashram, even though Paul can tell he doesn’t want to. Alone in the room with Mal, Paul suddenly wonders just how much Mal knows. Going red with it, Paul turns back to his case, he stuffs whatever is left inside and drags the zipper closed. 

“Let me,” Mal says to him, before Paul can lift it off the mattress. 

He lets himself be taken care of; he figures that that’s what Brian wants for him. 

\--

It’s a quiet journey to New Dehli. 

It’s quiet on the plane too. There aren’t many other passengers around them, so Mal turns in his seat towards Paul after they’ve straightened out in the air. He tugs Paul’s attention away from the window and says: “You know, I would have done anything to keep John safe in Memphis.” Paul swallows hard and he nods. He realizes Mal must know everything. “I’m telling you: the same is true for you right now.” 

Paul nods, and he thinks of the life he’d been so afraid to lose: the comforts, the friends, the love. He holds it all so dear, and he realizes, right in front of him, Mal is holding onto it just as tightly. “Thank you, Mal.”

“Besides,” Mal adds. “We all know it hasn’t got any merit.” Paul goes stiff next to him. John had said something similar and Paul had lied to him. He realizes he wants to stop lying. 

“And if it did?” he manages, his voice strangled out and terrified. 

Mal goes still next to him, just for a moment, then he gazes back at Paul and shrugs honestly. “Then, it would have merit. Wouldn’t change how I do my job. Wouldn’t change me as your mate.”

Paul exhales sharply and they both must realize at the same time that he’d been holding his breath. As if to say:  _ there’s nothing to be afraid of _ , Mal reaches out and squeezes at the crook of Paul’s neck. It’s a comforting touch, in more ways than one: it makes Paul relax into the cushioned airplane seat, but it also makes him realize that Mal’s still unafraid to touch him. 

In a world of men desperately afraid, Mal will still touch him. 

\--

The secretaries go quiet as Mal leads Paul down towards Brian’s office. Paul keeps his eyes on the middle of Mal’s back, only offering small ‘hello’s when someone speaks to him first. Brian’s on the phone when Mal steps through the door, Paul on his heels. Brian glances up at them and lifts a finger to them, making them stop in their tracks. “Mhmm,” he hums. “Yes, of course. Well…” His eyes flicker to Paul, then he twists in his seat and lowers his voice. “Keep on as you were,” he says subtly. “Yes. Yes, exactly. Okay. Thank you very much.” Brian lowers the phone back on the body, twists back towards Paul and smiles. It’s too broad. It doesn’t make Paul want to smile back. 

Paul sits down in the chair opposite Brian and watches as Brian leans forward. His smile shrinks, but it goes to something more genuine. Something honest and assuring. Brian opens his mouth to speak, but then hesitates. He looks to Mal and says: “I trust your flight was well?”

Mal glances to Paul as though his own opinion doesn’t even matter, so Paul nods at him, urging him to speak. Mal returns to Brian and tells him: “It was quiet.”

“I’m glad,” Brian says to him, then seems to look at Paul for confirmation, but all he gets is nervous energy, so he decides: “I think we need some tea, Mal.” He nods, hoping that Mal will get the hint that he’d prefer to have the room. It’s the years between them, the weeks and months they’ve spent living in one another’s pockets, because Mal reads it right. He nods and he’s out, pulling the door shut tight behind him in no time. 

As still and quiet as Brian lets his office go, Paul feels protected by the four walls around him, he feels protected by Brian in front of him, and it’s truer tenfold, when Brian steps out from behind his desk and sits down in the chair directly beside Paul, shuffling closer so he can reach out and touch the tips of his fingers to Paul’s knee. Paul keeps his eyes down on Brian’s hand. The familiarity of it isn’t enough to slow the way his heart is beating wildly behind his ribcage. 

“It’s out, isn’t it?” he asks. Brian squeezes at his knee and Paul hears him inhale deeply. He still can’t bear to look at him. 

“The publisher’s requested further printing,” Brian tells him. It’s firm, it’s honest, and Paul suddenly wonders why he’d ever wanted Brian to stop babying him. Paul nods, chews on the inside of his cheek and feels all the breath rush out of him when Brian adds: “That means the demand is there.” Brian edges closer to him and takes both of Paul’s hands in his. He gives his fingers a deliberate squeeze and Paul knows that he’s meant to look up at him. When he does, Brian looks slightly fraught, but he’s better at hiding it than Paul is. “I know you’ve already told me, but I need to ask again.” He ignores the way that makes Paul sigh. “There really isn’t anyone who might be able to give any credibility to this story?  _ Any _ piece of information can --”

Paul covers a scoff with the word, “ _ No _ ,” and shakes his head. 

“If it were in the wrong hands, Paul --”

“There  _ isn’t _ anyone,” Paul urges. “I’m not like you,” he bites back. “I don’t pick up men at queer clubs,” he adds and he  _ knows _ it’s the nerves making him cruel. He can see Brian knows it too, but the words are still out of his mouth. They’re harsh and heated and Paul has never wanted them to exist between the two of them. Brian looks away from him. He nods, offers understanding, but can’t seem to wholly cover up the way that’s hurt him. It makes Paul feel like a little kid: immature, angry, and embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, trying to rub out the stress lines from his forehead. 

“It’s alright,” Brian tells him, but Paul knows: any other day, any other situation, it wouldn’t be. 

“I just --...” Paul looks up at Brian and waits for their eyes to meet. “I wasn’t lying, you’re the only man I’ve ever kissed.” Something falls like a stone in his stomach: he wishes there were more men he could name. He wishes he could say:  _ John, Tara, Robert _ ; it’d make this whole stupid bloody rumour actually  _ mean _ something. The only reason he’s ever stopped himself from kissing them is that he’d been afraid that people would find out. They’d see him for the sort of man he is, but they were going to see him, anyway. They were going to see him and hate him and he hadn’t even kissed John before it happened. 

“Alright,” Brian repeats. “We’re doing what we can,” he assures. “We’re getting our hands on as many copies as humanly possible.” Paul nods graciously. “We’re trying to keep the press distracted.”

“And if you can’t?” Paul asks, and it gives Brian just enough pause to make Paul feel sick. There isn’t a reality here for Brian where this gets much bigger than it already has. Any bigger would mean disaster: no more Brian, no more Paul McCartney, no more Beatles. And he’s  _ always  _ known, of course he’s always known, but it suddenly sinks in: if this grew, if this ruined Paul, it wouldn’t stop there. It would ruin Brian too. And John, and George, and Rich. It would all be broken. 

“You shouldn’t worry about that, Paul --”

“We’d never make another record,” Paul blurts out. “Nobody’d buy it --”

“That’s not true --”

“Not unless they knew I had nothing to do with it.” Brian shakes his head at him. “Nobody wants my queer hands all over a Beatles record.”

Brian opens his mouth to say something, then must decide against it. He looks away and instead says: “John wouldn’t make a Beatles record without you,” in a way that makes Paul wonder if he’d been thinking about John already. “None of the boys would.”

“I won’t be the reason the Beatles end,” Paul tells him and he realizes his heart in his throat. He can’t breathe properly because he realizes what he really means is: “They should go on without me. Keep recording, keep making appearances --”

“‘ _ They’ _ ?” Brian stammers. “Paul, there isn’t a ‘they’; The Beatles are The Beatles and you’re still a part of them.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Paul says, his voice quakes on every word. “Maybe I shouldn’t be.”

Brian sputters on whatever he must mean to say. It’s the first time Paul’s ever rendered him speechless. “No,” is all he can come up with, and he knows it isn’t enough, but he can’t quite seem to string any more words onto it. “No,” he says again. “That just won’t do.”

“Is that villa in Greece really ready?” Paul asks. 

“Well, yes,” Brian answers, not following his train of thought. 

“I think I ought to go there,” Paul says. “Stay quiet for a bit. Let the lads do the next album and maybe this whole thing will be gone by then.”

“I don’t think --” Brian stutters. He wishes he could think about this more, Paul can see that. He feels wholly unprepared and Paul hates that he’s the base reason for it. 

“You think it’s a bad idea,” Paul finishes for him. He takes a deep breath and it catches somewhere in his chest. He hasn’t felt this far away from his breath since his mother died. He feels sick with it. His hands have gone numb. He thinks if he stays here a minute longer, he’ll start floating up somewhere above his own body. It frightens him. Living in a world where people know who he’d like to kiss  _ frightens him _ . 

“I do,” Brian allows gently. He reaches out for Paul’s hand again. He must see that he’s losing him. He tugs him back into his own skin, tucks his heart back behind his rib cage, and reminds him that he’s real, that he’s living and breathing somewhere behind his own anxiety. “But I remember running to London when it felt like Liverpool knew too much about me.” He lifts Paul’s hand to his lips and presses a soft kiss to the back of his fingers, and it’s so gentle a thing that it makes Paul cry before he understands why. 

“ _ Everyone _ will know too much, Bri,” he says, and Brian nods as soon as he sees the first tear trace down Paul’s cheek. “I won’t be able to run anywhere. I don’t know what to do.”

Still nodding assuredly, Brian tells him: “So you’ll go to Greece.” Paul nods along with him. “Mal will take you there. Nobody knows you’ve left India anyway. You need a moment to breathe. To process.”

“Yeah,” Paul says graciously, though he realizes Brian’s allowing it for the sake of Paul convincing himself that leaving The Beatles isn’t the play here. 

Then, Brian lets go of his hands and he tugs on the lapels of Paul’s jacket, straightening it across his chest. He smiles reassuringly. “I’ll have it organized. Go home, Paul.” His hands trace up to the collar of Paul’s shirt as his thumb smooths out a crease there. “Mal will pick you up in the morning.” 

“Okay,” Paul manages, sniffling like a kid, and it makes him go pink. Brian stands and pulls him to his feet. He gives Paul’s biceps a reassuring squeeze, then guides him towards the door. 

Mal is out in a chair in the reception area, tea having never been wanted. He stands when he sees Brian and Paul approaching him and Paul realizes that nobody has allowed him to be alone since he’d been beckoned back home. That realization warms him. For the short drive back to St. John’s Wood, it makes him forget how exhausted he is, how terrified he is. 

His own front door falls shut behind him and he realizes that Mal hasn’t followed him inside. The quiet house eats him alive almost immediately. He falls into the big green velvet chair in his sitting room because John once told him it made him feel small enough to be held. He imagines himself on that island in Greece and knows he’s seeing the version of himself that is a coward, but he doesn’t care. London would become a battle zone. Being a Beatle would become a target on his back. 

He pictures himself in that villa, then starts to picture himself anywhere else too. A man on the run, at least until people would forget his name. He’d outrun the newspapers, the radio shows. He’d disappear until he’d fall into the oblivion of history, then he could come back: he could come back to his family, to music, to John and the lads. 

He thinks of John on that island with him, and he realizes that John would come with him if he asked him to. He’d come to Greece and he’d follow Paul wherever else he ran to. Brian had been right: John wouldn’t make a Beatle record without him, it would all crumble and fall apart, and it would be Paul’s fault for it. John deserved music, he deserved to be loved and open and free to say and be whoever he wanted to be. He’d convinced Paul that he deserved all the same when they were kids: they deserved the life they’d built with one another, because they’d been dealt dirt, they’d dug through all that shit, and they’d  _ found one another _ . That had meant something to the both of them. 

No, Paul couldn’t break the thing that John had set in motion when he was five years old and his father had left him in Blackpool. He’d leave it be, and John would be allowed to keep building. 

He gathers himself a glass of whiskey because he knows that allowing John to keep building means lying to him. He’s somewhere into his third glass when he realizes that he can say  _ everything’s fine _ and actually sound like he means it. 

It’s John who answers the compound’s telephone and it makes Paul's heart jump into his throat. He closes his eyes and sees John somewhere behind them, finishing up with his lessons, and then waiting dutifully by the phone for Paul’s call. He realizes he hasn’t spoken, when John tries down the line: “Macca, is that you?”

“Yes,” he manages, the sound of John’s fond name for him catching him up. “Yeah, it’s me, sorry.”

John sighs, meaning to sound relieved, but he’s tense, Paul can feel it. “What’s going on, then?” he asks. “Is it just Eppy being Eppy? Making me hide Cynthia sort of thing?”

Paul takes a deep breath and hates the way he shakes on it; he hopes John hasn’t heard him. “Everything’s fine,” he says, his words well-rehearsed. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Paul manages. Now, behind his eyes, he sees himself in Greece, hidden away, and has to bat John away from the fantasy whenever he can. He hates how much he wants John there with him; he hates how much he believes that that can’t happen. “He’s overreacting, nobody’s talking about it,” Paul continues, knowing full-well that Brian hadn’t told him in so many words, but: people  _ were  _ talking about it, and it felt like it was only a matter of time before there would be nothing else to talk about. 

“Well, that’s good then,” John says, but Paul isn’t sure that he believes him. He says it as though it’s a question, but Paul can’t take an interrogation. He downs whatever is left of his whiskey and stands to make another, dragging his telephone with him. “Are you at home?” John asks, hearing the noise. 

“Yeah,” Paul answers, without explanation. 

John pauses, then asks: “Have you seen Jane yet?” and Paul isn’t sure what the real question here is. He lives somewhere inside of John’s head, but he  _ still _ doesn’t always understand him. 

“No, not yet,” he allows carefully. “I don’t even think she knows I’ve left India.”

“Hmm,” John hums back. “You reckon you should call her?”

Paul sighs, pointed and exasperated. He adds an extra dollop of whiskey into his new glass for good measure. “I don’t know,” he mutters. He realizes he doesn’t know much of anything, but what’s certain is that he doesn’t want to speak to Jane Asher. And it isn’t right. With a trip to Greece looming over him, it isn’t right that he doesn’t want to speak to her. “Probably.” He should want to tell her goodbye just as much as he’d wanted to hear John’s voice now. 

The line goes still between them and Paul knows that John means to ask him again:  _ is everything really alright? _ And Paul knows he can’t lie to him again, so he fills that dead space with  _ anything _ else: “Have you written a song without me? Or have you just been hanging about by the phone?”

John chuckles to himself and Paul thinks they’ve gone safe. He seems to settle in against the furniture in the room he’s in in Rishikesh. “ _ You just gotta call on me, yeah _ ,” John sing-songs his own lyrics back. “Oh, wait, no, I’ve already written that one,” he says, smiling through his own joke. “It would appear you’ve gone and left me without a muse, then.”

“Oh, dear,” Paul answers, smiling too, but then he falters: was there a version of John that didn’t write anymore just because Paul had left him alone? Was that the sort of risk he was running by whisking himself away to Greece and God knows where else after that? “You’ll keep at it though, won’t you?” Paul asks and he realizes he must sound too urgent, but he’s got enough whiskey in his belly that he knows he can’t keep himself from saying this. “You’ll write even when you’re on your own?”

John’s quiet in return; Paul realizes that John lives somewhere inside his own head too, but he doesn’t always understand him, and he hates it. Paul can feel the way John hates that they’re speaking to one another over the telephone. He can almost hear John’s voice in his head:  _ look at me _ . He needs to see his eyes, that’s the only way to connect, know, understand, love. “Well, yeah,” he answers carefully. Something like a nervous laugh escapes. “We’ve been writing on our own for years, haven’t we, Paul? It was just a joke.”

“No, I know,” Paul answers, feeling himself starting to go beet red. Something tells him to hop off the line, but he knows that would just make him look even stranger, more guilty. “I just mean… I just hope you know that you don’t need me there to write songs.” Paul can feel the way John’s gone stoic. “You’re a good writer,” he persists. 

“I know I am,” John interjects, but Paul hardly acknowledges him. 

“You come up with stuff I never could,” Paul tells him. “I think you made me good, not the other way ‘round,” he continues, and he hears John scoff. It might not be true, Paul hadn’t given it enough thought, but he just needs John to  _ hear _ it. He needs him to hear it and internalize it and let him go. For a few months, a year, however long it takes for this story to blow over: John needs to let him go. 

“I’m  _ writing _ , Paul,” John tells him, as though Paul were a strict teacher, making sure he finished all his schoolwork, and it isn’t the way Paul had hoped he would take it, but at least it’s something. At least it’s John saying:  _ I’ll keep writing. _ “You think you’ve tapped the well?” John asks him caustically. “You testing the waters to see if I’ll fill out the album for us while you get your groove back?”

“I haven’t stopped writing either,” Paul defends, before he realizes that he’s meant to be arguing the exact opposite. 

“Good,” John pokes. 

“Good,” Paul repeats back. And they’ve gone nowhere. John’s brought him right back into his orbit, and that’s not good. With his bag still packed, he means to take it all with him to Greece, he can’t be in John’s orbit. 

They fall into something quiet. Paul knows John means to ask him for the third time:  _ is everything really alright? _ But he doesn’t, and Paul’s never been so glad that the two of them have grown up so emotionally stunted. He wonders what might have happened between them if they’d had mothers who had stayed alive, who had taught them how to feel things properly. The thing between them would be bright and boundless and terrifying. They had to be stunted. It was the only way to keep it all under control. 

“It’s late for you,” Paul finally observes. 

“Yeah,” John allows. 

“Aren’t you tired?” Paul asks. 

“Not really,” he says, but it sounds like a lie; all it means is that he doesn’t want to say:  _ I waited up for you. _

“I don’t want to keep you,” Paul adds. 

“You  _ aren’t _ .”

Paul sighs; he’d stay on the line all night if John wanted him to, but he knows that if he stays much longer, he’ll break down and tell him how frightened he is, how desperately he wants to run away with John by his side, rather than alone. He  _ has _ to hang up now, or it all will come tumbling out. “I should go, John,” he says. “I’m knackered from the flight, and I’ve still got to unpack, and --”

“Alright, alright,” John mumbles. “Just say you want to go, it’s alright,” he chides. 

Paul swallows down the urge to tell him:  _ I don’t want to go. _ What comes out instead is a heavy, bated breath. He realizes he wants to tell John he loves him, and he isn’t sure he wouldn’t mean it as though it were everything: as though they lived in a world where loving one another meant that they could live like John had lived with Cynthia, or Paul with Jane. Those three words --  _ I love you _ \-- hang over them both. It’s like a game of chicken; who would be brave enough to run out and grab them first?

“Alright,” Paul relents. “Goodnight, Johnny,” he says and he hears the way it makes John smile. 

“Goodnight, Paul,” he returns. “You really ought to learn to sleep on planes, Macca, like us normal people.”

Paul chuckles back. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he says. Those three words are back. Or maybe, they had never left.  _ I love you, I love you, I love you. _ Would they mean the same from John? Would he mean them the way Paul means them? The fact that Paul still has to wonder keeps him from saying it out loud. For now, he’ll just have to think it, he’ll just have to will it as an idea into John’s head until it fills him up entirely, making him warm and happy. 

“I’ll be in London soon,” John says. “I’ll see you there.”

“Yeah,” Paul chokes out, knowing that might not be true. 

He has to hang up the phone before he lies again. He’s already told one too many. With the phone back on the hook, John’s voice out of his head, he feels decidedly alone. It’s a cold loneliness that he supposes he’ll just have to get used to. 

He polishes off his last glass of whiskey, huddled into the cracks of John’s favourite chair; it’s comforting to know he’s in a place where John has exactly been. It keeps something alive, burning down it’s coals, inside of him. He falls asleep there before he realizes it’s happened and sleeps through the night, as though John were next to him, until a knock at the door stirs him. 

“Oh, shit,” he mutters, unfolding himself from the chair, rolling the various knots out of his neck and shoulders. He’s getting too old for this shite. The knocking continues, so he groggily checks his watch and realizes he must be late. He remembers Brian’s words:  _ Mal will pick you up in the morning. _

“Shit!” he continues, standing, rushing towards his front door, flattening out his hair and clothes as he goes. He glances at his still unopened suitcase on the floor in the foyer and he’s glad for the convenience. He opens the door to Mal, suitcase in hand, and if he notices that Paul is still in the same clothes he’d flown home from India in, he doesn’t breathe a word of it. 

Paul heeds John’s advice: he sleeps on the plane. 

\--

They land in Athens and people smile at him there just like they had the year before. Their driver takes his case from him, sets it in the boot of the car and pats the center of his back jovially. It makes him realize that the world is so big. There’s a life outside of London, outside of the anxiety that he’d felt in Brian’s office. There was a world around him that didn’t see him so clearly. It makes him feel like there would always be somewhere to run to. 

Mal takes to a local market hanging on the edge of the boating docks to grab their groceries while they wait for their private boat. Paul takes it slowly: he examines every fruit he picks up in his hand. Takes in the sounds of a busy city center: squawking birds, locals haggling with one another. He feels like he can breathe. 

When he’s moved on to the carton of veggies, a tiny hand reaches up for the hem of his shirt and tugs at it gently. He looks down at a little girl, missing one of her front teeth, as she beams up at him. Her cheeks go pink: it’s  _ actually _ him. She hops excitedly, shouting something in Greek, and then mimes a signature at him. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says back to her, crouching down to be on her level. “Of course, sweetheart.” He mimes a signature back, telling her that he’s understood. She passes him a pen and an old flimsy receipt and as soon as she does, she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She tucks them under her chin, then shoves them deep into the pockets of her shorts. She twirls in place, waiting for him to finish. 

He hands her back the folded receipt and she stares down at his name, dumb-founded. She smiles back up at him and then must not be able to resist: she wraps her arms around his neck, muttering what he has to know are ‘thank you’s’ against his throat. 

“Alright?” Mal asks, towering over them both. 

Paul glances up at him and nods. “Oh, yeah,” he tells him. “Autograph,” he explains. 

“I think we ought to be off,” Mal says and he throws a look across the market. There must be more eyes on them than Paul’s realized because he taps at Paul’s shoulder, meaning to lift him back to his feet, so Paul has to peel himself away from this little girl, who just can’t stop smiling. As soon as he stands, she reaches out to hold his hand and Paul doesn’t want to leave. 

He wants to stay in this place forever: a place that feels like 1964, where nobody thought to do anything but love him. 

The villa is gorgeous; Brian has truly outdone himself. There are a few building bones laid around the island, marking places for more villas around them. It’ll be remarkable when it’s finished, as anything usually is when it’s got Brian’s hands all over it. Mal gives a good whistle, impressed himself, when they step into the bright, airy sitting room and set their bags down on the floor. 

The back wall is nearly all glass and gazes right out onto the sea. The island’s edge softens into a small beach where they’ve already built a little bar in the sand with some deck chairs. It’s more than any of them deserve. Paul, a poor boy from Liverpool, can’t believe he’s come here. He silently blesses John for coming up with the mad idea and pushing them forward even though they’d all told him it was daft. That was their John. Island or no island, where would they be at all without him pushing them onward and upward? 

They throw glances at one another, smiling brightly, then split off to pick their bedrooms. 

Upstairs, he finally peels out of the clothes he’s spent two flights in. He sneaks off to the wash closet and steps into the shower before Mal can get there. Every room feels just as bright as the sitting room had. It opens his chest, fills his lungs, and beneath the hot water of the shower, he forgets about London, entirely. About Beatles and rumours and anything that isn’t a bright shining sun over the Meditaranean. 

\--

Once they’re settled, he and Mal split a bottle of tequila between the two of them and then Mal digs out a bottle of ouzo from deep inside the cabinets and they move onto that. Paul builds a fire in the sitting room when the sun begins to set and they both spill down from the couch and onto the floor to be closer to the lapping flames.

They’re halfway through the bottle of ouzo when there’s a knock at the door and it makes their blood run cold. They both stare at one another, cutting off any conversation where it lies. It’s like a bleeding horror film: a knock on the door on a deserted island. Paul feels his breath start to hitch in his throat and his head runs away with him: the story’s blown up and people have found him. Press, bigots, you name it, they’re here. 

Mal stands and holds his hand out to Paul when Paul seems to be doing the same. 

They both hold their breaths until there’s another knock and that seems to put Mal in gear. He charges towards the fireplace, grabs at one of the pokers and takes it with him towards the front door. It’s enough to make Paul stand and follow him. “Mal!” he hisses after him. “Mal, don’t answer it!”

Mal holds his hand out to him sharply and it makes Paul go stone silent. He feels himself starting to shake like a leaf when Mal disappears down the front hallway. Holding his breath, he leans slightly forward, trying to listen for any sign of a fight, anything he might have to put himself in the middle of. 

The door opens to muffled voices, but Paul can’t make them out over the blood pumping in his ears. Then, Mal’s voice cuts through it all: “John!” There are footsteps coming towards the sitting room and Paul knows exactly who they belong to, even if Mal hadn’t just said John’s name. He steps backward, deeper into the sitting room, means to disappear completely before John is suddenly there: brazen in the sitting room entryway, looking exhausted and angry and in need of as much alcohol as Paul has got in his system. 

Mal is only a few beats behind him; he peers over John’s shoulder at Paul apologetically, but Paul knows: there was no stopping John when he got like this. Not even the best bodyguard any of them would ever have. 

“John…” Paul says dumbly. 

John narrows his eyes at him, as if he can’t believe that that’s all he has to say. His cheeks have gone red with anger and he goes broad. If they were still eighteen, Paul would be afraid that John was going to hit him. Instead, John uses his words: “Spoke to Brian,” he spits out. Paul swallows hard. “Everything’s  _ fine _ , eh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I really have much to note for this chapter!
> 
> So, I think I'll just take this moment to say thank you to everyone who's read this thing so far, everybody's comments have been so interesting! It's definitely pushed me into doing way more additional research!
> 
> Obviously, this is sort of where it goes off-the-rails, history-wise! But if, like on chapter one, anybody has any cool finds pertaining to this book, or anything you think is of interest, definitely leave a comment! It was so great to get that sort of interaction!
> 
> I am very quickly edging up to the point where I don't have any plot outlined, so I foresee some slower updates ahead, unfortunately haha but please stay with me, I swear this thing will get finished!


	3. chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one got a little away from me in terms of the word count lmao
> 
> Um, hopefully, other chapters won't be this long/take me this long to get through!
> 
> But, let's see: forewarning for some serious internalized homophobia. There is also a reference to Tony Sheridan's f-word comment about Paul here. So, that's not great, but then we also go right into some explicit content lmao. So, warning for that as well, I suppose!
> 
> TRULY, this is where we will go off-the-rails-bonkers in terms of historical accuracy. So, here we go! In the same vein, obviously, this is totally fiction, then, obv no defamation/disrespect intended!
> 
> I think that's all I got, so enjoy the chapter! Hopefully I can have another one up in the next few weeks!
> 
> As always, follow me on tumblr @orphanbeat, if you're so inclined!! :):) i'm a lot more chill and un-angsty over there, I swear!

There’s a half-empty bottle of Irish whiskey between them on the kitchen table before Paul decides he can actually look John in the eye. John raises his eyebrows at him when he does, not intending to let him get away with it. 

“So, I am here, then,” he muses. He throws back what’s left of his whiskey and sets the glass back down on the table with finality. He doesn’t need any more alcohol in his system to talk; Paul isn’t so sure. “I was beginning to think you maybe weren’t aware I was sitting directly in front of you --”

“John,” Paul intones. 

John just shrugs casually. “I need you to look at me, that’s all,” he says. Paul feels something in his chest go tight. “Not like I can trust your words, can I?” Paul rolls his eyes, but mostly, he just knows that John’s right. “I’ve got to see your eyes to know when you’re lying to me.”

“I wasn’t--”

“Weren’t you?” John says sharply. “‘ _ Everything’s fine, John _ ’.” Paul shuts his mouth so fast he nearly bites his tongue. John just stares at him and waits, wants to make him say it, but he doesn’t want to, so Paul just shrugs helplessly, conceding that  _ maybe _ John’s right, though he’d never say that sort of thing in as many words. Then, John reaches out for his glass, swirls it around in his hand: he must be lamenting that he’s already emptied it. His eyes are down somewhere in the bottom of the glass. He asks: “What was the plan here, Macca?” and his eyes flicker upward when he expects an answer. 

“I don’t know,” Paul admits. 

“It isn’t out,” John tells him. “Not the way you think it must be to have come here.”

“I know,” Paul mutters. 

“But what if it was?” John asks and Paul realizes his voice has gone small. John swallows hard when he realizes Paul’s seen vulnerability where he hasn’t wanted him to. Paul watches him decide to press forward anyway, and wonders how many other people in this world might actually be able to make John Lennon do that. He imagines the list of names following his own must be quite short. “If it got out while you were here, where would you have gone next?” Paul feels his shoulders droop downward. He lifts his whiskey to his lips, feeling as though he wishes he could disappear behind the fine glass. “Would you have ever come back to London?” John asks, but Paul hears what he really means:  _ were you really leaving me forever? _

“I suppose…” Paul starts and his throat goes raw when he sees John lean towards him. He looks like the version of John that Paul never knew: the five year old boy who hadn’t been wanted by his parents. “I suppose I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.”

“There wasn’t a plan?” John asks, though he sounds unconvinced. And he should be: Paul had planned the life of a vagabond for himself. There hadn’t been anything concrete, of course, but he’d known he would be in Greece until the press found him here, then it would be Scotland, or maybe France -- he’d planned to run everywhere until people stopped asking him who he’d like to kiss. 

“Not really,” Paul manages because it doesn’t feel wholly like a lie.

“You could have  _ told _ me,” John says, because he must be tired of calling Paul a liar. “I’m here now, aren’t I?” John must see him chewing through the side of his cheek, because he sighs and leans backward, actively decides to appear less confrontational. “I still would have come if you’d just told me.”

And Paul knows that to be true, so he shakes his head. John opens his mouth to say something back, so Paul closes his eyes to it. He closes his eyes and shakes his head a little more emphatically. It keeps John quiet. So, Paul decides to give him honesty in return: “I think that’s what I might have been afraid of.” John narrows his eyes at him, but allows him the time to articulate this purposefully. “People are going to talk about me, John,” Paul tells him. “I don’t want them to talk about you too. If you came with me, if we both disappeared, people would say things you don’t want them to say.”

John goes stiff in front of him, for long enough that Paul thinks he might not have anything to say back. He blinks, seems to come back to himself, and says: “It shouldn’t be you in that book, Paul,” and it makes something heavy settle around them: something neither of them have ever wanted to look at, but John, especially. It lights something inside of Paul, that helping Paul and protecting him, is what makes John look this in the face. Now, it’s Paul’s turn to wait. To wait for John to  _ say it _ . “I mean,” he stammers, shrugging helplessly. “I was the one who went to Spain with Brian for Christ’s sake,” he says, and he offers a humourless laugh that just makes Paul sad, because they were so close. They were  _ so close _ to saying what they really mean. Paul wants him to continue, to  _ explain _ what going to Spain with Brian really means, but he knows John won’t. 

There are footsteps in the hallway upstairs and it must make John remember that they aren’t alone in this villa because he refills his glass of whiskey and goes stoic. Wherever they might have been going, whatever they might have said, dissipates between them, so Paul pushes his glass forward, silently asking for more whiskey too. He thinks that if it’s better this way for John -- quiet and avoidant -- maybe it’s better for the both of them. 

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Paul tells him, muttering a quiet ‘thank you’ once his glass is full. “It isn’t you in the book, so.”

“Right,” John mutters. And Paul realizes that John hasn’t yelled at him, not the way Paul had been expecting, and he realizes what that must mean: he’d never been angry, he’d just been afraid. 

“I’m sorry,” Paul tries, and John’s eyes flicker up towards him almost immediately. His lips part slightly, like he must mean to say something, but nothing comes to mind. “I’m sorry if it felt like I was leaving you.”

“‘ _ If _ ’?” he asks.

Paul shakes his head at himself, at his own wording and tries again: “Not if,” he amends. “I  _ was _ leaving, and I should have told you.” John swallows hard. He throws a glance vaguely upward, as though he’s afraid Neil or Mal might suddenly decide to rejoin them, when he’s exposed for his most vulnerable. “I know better than to not tell you.” He nods when John looks back at him with the eyes of a five year old. “That wasn’t fair.”

John blinks, once, twice, then he’s back in himself. His face goes slightly harder and he reaches out for his glass of whiskey. “I flew here to yell at you,” he says from behind the glass. “You didn’t even let me yell at you before you apologized.”

Paul smiles, offers a hapless shrug, and it makes John smile weakly back at him. “You still could,” he allows. “If you really wanted to. I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“Well, I don’t  _ now _ , is the thing,” John gripes. 

“So, can we let the kids come back downstairs, then?” Paul asks, meaning Neil and Mal, both sequestered upstairs in their rooms, doubtlessly trying their best to listen into their conversation in any way they can. “Are Mummy and Daddy finished fighting?”

John rolls his eyes at him, but can’t help fighting back a smile. “I suppose they are, yes.”

The four of them end up on the floor in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine each. John is next to Paul, resting all of his weight on an elbow, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. He’s halfway through his glass when his eyes start to fall shut. Paul’s so endeared by it that he finds he has to look away. 

“You know,” Neil says, downing the last of his wine. “All things considered, it’s quite nice being here.”

Mal snorts a laugh, but Paul feels his chest go tight. Next to him, he senses John go tense too. Keeping his eyes on Neil, Paul watches his face freeze and he knows that John’s passing him a silent message to keep his bloody mouth shut. 

“How do you mean?” Paul asks anyway. He hears John sigh and then he groans as Paul pokes back: “‘All things considered’?”

“Well,” Neil stammers. He looks to John for some sort of direction, but clearly, John isn’t offering him any. “Well, I --...” Paul can’t stand to see him flounder any longer, so he turns to look at John, who’s got his forehead in his hands, shaking his head slightly. 

“You told him about the book?” Paul demands. 

“Now, look, Paul --” Neil tries, but John interrupts him with: “Yes, I bloody told him. I was fuming with you. Where was I meant to put all that?”

“Who else did you tell?” Paul asks. 

“No one,” John promises. “I haven’t even bloody  _ seen _ anybody else. I’ve been on a plane or in a car for the last fourteen hours.”

“And a boat,” Neil offers. 

“And a boat, thanks, Nell,” John tacks on. 

“Nobody’s supposed to  _ know _ , John,” Paul seethes. “That’s sort of the whole point. You’re not meant to blab about it --”

“Oh, come off it,” John grumbles. “It’s just  _ Neil _ .”

“Nobody’ll believe a word of it,” Neil says. “It’s all shite, anyway, isn’t it, Paul?” 

The room goes still. Paul can feel Mal and John’s eyes on him. 

Paul glances to Mal, who hides his face behind his glass of wine. He keeps his eyes down low on the carpet and for a split-second, Paul thinks about telling Neil the truth, the same way he’d done with Mal, but his mouth won’t follow his head. His jaw stays wired shut and it makes him feel horrible: lying by omission makes him feel sick, and he realizes that this is exactly how he’ll have to live the rest of his life. Until  _ everyone _ stopped caring about men loving and kissing other men, he’d have to live his life this way: like a liar, like a sneak. He wonders how Brian has lived this way all this time.

“Right,” Paul says. “It isn’t true, I’d  _ never _ \--...” And he realizes he must be overcompensating; he must be feigning too much offense and disgust because Mal can’t look at him and Paul thinks he catches John wince at his words. Neil’s just nodding, the only one not let in on the big secret in the room, and it’s easy for him to believe the lie. 

Paul doesn’t even know why he’s done it. He knows Neil wouldn’t think any less of him. He realizes it must be some kind of self-preservation instinct, but still, that revelation isn’t enough to make him come to his senses and tell the truth. He thinks of that feigned offense and disgust and realizes that it’d been real. Somewhere deep inside of him, it’d been real, and the shame of it all, it fills him up so much that he’s afraid if he opens his mouth, it would all come tumbling out. 

So, he just nods when Neil says: “Exactly,” and he keeps his eyes down on his hands in front of him and doesn’t dare say anything else. He isn’t sure what would be worse: another lie or the truth, so he decides to say nothing at all. It must be Mal who changes the subject, Paul can’t be sure over the ringing in his ears, but he knows it can’t be John, because John’s gone just as quiet as he has. It’s a terrible silence, mostly because Paul knows he’s caused it. It’s heavy; Paul’s shame hangs over them both. 

“Right, lads,” John eventually says, and Paul realizes he can actually breathe again at the sound of it. “I think I’m off. That flight’s got me knackered.” He pulls himself to his feet, offers both Mal and Neil a smile, but stops still before he looks to Paul. “Where am I, then?”

“There’s only three rooms,” Mal says. 

“I think that puts you in with Paul,” Neil suggests. It’s insignificant -- he and John have shared rooms and beds loads of time, that’s the only reason why Neil’s said it, but it brings that tightness in Paul’s chest back. 

Mostly because John feels the need to ask: “That alright with you, Paulie?”

“Course it it,” he says, he looks up at John and John’s looking right through him. John nods, then he turns away before Paul can silently tell him:  _ I’m sorry _ . He isn’t sure John even wants to hear it. 

The three of them have another two glasses of wine, gossiping about London and Rishikesh and anything in between. Despite Paul not being able to fully take his mind off of John asleep alone in his room upstairs, the evening goes quite pleasant. It feels safe, like a vacation ought to. So much so, that Paul even forgets that this isn’t a vacation at all. 

They decide to call it a night when the bottle’s finished. Paul’s glad for it; the red wine in his belly has made him feel warm and content. A good night’s sleep calls for him through the cherry haze. 

Keeping the lights off, Paul strips out of his clothes and climbs into the bed next to John. As he pulls the blankets up towards his chest, he hears John’s voice through the darkness: “Hey,” he mumbles. 

“Oh, shit,” Paul immediately mutters. “I’m sorry, John, love, I didn’t mean to --”

“You didn’t,” John tells him and something in his tone makes Paul’s blood run cold. How long has John been lying there awake? Waiting for him, wanting to speak to him. John inches closer to him, a beam of moonlight spills across his face: he looks serious and determined. It makes Paul swallow hard. 

“Is everything alright?” Paul hears himself ask. 

“Is this the worst thing to happen to you?” Paul feels his heart skip a beat. “That people might think you’re a queer?”

“John --”

“Because if it is,” John starts and Paul hears his voice waver. It makes him give up on whatever fight he’d wanted to put up. “If you think that’s the worst thing you can be, that  _ any man _ could be, then --...” John shrugs helplessly and his eyes skirt down to the sheets between them. 

“I don’t --”

“Because I’ve been with Brian,” John confesses. Paul feels himself exhale sharply: he’d known it had to be a possibility, but he never thought John would admit to it. “And…” He shakes his head and Paul just swallows hard, waits for whatever might come next. “And Stuart before him too,” he says and the room goes tinged with grief. “So… so, Spain… It wasn’t some one-off  _ thing _ . It…” He shakes his head and Paul can’t stand it. He can’t stand how red with embarrassment and shame he’s gone. He can’t stand that John can’t even look at him because he’s afraid Paul will find him repulsive. He can’t stand that, even though Paul might have known about Brian, and Stuart too, for that matter, he can’t stand that John’s been holding onto this himself all these years. “It’s who I am, and if that  _ frightens  _ you, or -- or  _ disgusts _ you, or whatever --”

“It  _ doesn’t  _ \--” Paul tries to insist, but John’s been lying here awake too long: he’s going to say what he planned to say.

“Then, I think that might change things between us,” he finishes with, and Paul’s shaking his head before John even gets the last word out. 

“It isn’t because --...” He shuts his eyes, shaking his head, and feels John’s weight inch slightly closer to him. “I’m afraid because I think it might be true.”

John goes still in front of him, for so long, that Paul manages to open his eyes and look at him. His lips hang slightly parted and he’s watching Paul with narrowed eyes, as though he’s waiting for the moment that Paul will take it all back. Like, he can’t quite believe that there’s been someone just like him in front of him the whole time. 

“You what?” he manages.

“I’ve never been with a man,” Paul tells him. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to.” 

And Paul realizes the enormity of it: they’ve both laid claim to the sort of men they are. They’ve both finally  _ said _ that if they wanted to kiss one another, they could. For the first time, Paul pictures himself kissing John, slotting himself between John’s legs and John  _ actually _ wanting him to do so. He knows John must be imagining the same thing because he looks frightened. Like everything was too close, and if he reached out to grab it all, he might crack it in half. 

It’s too precious a thing, and suddenly it’s been made real. 

Paul realizes he doesn’t want to break it either. 

And then: something horrible hangs over him. John’s kissed Brian, and Stuart, too. He’d been brave enough to tell them that he’d wanted to. He’d have told Paul the same by now if he’d really wanted to. 

“Like who?” John whispers, and all Paul can think is:  _ don’t break this, don’t break this, don’t break this, _ and he must wait too long, because John’s expression goes hard in front of him, and there’s more metaphorical space between them than this bed will allow. “Is it Bob Fraser?” he asks, his voice laced with something cruel that makes Paul clam up in front of him. 

The weight of what neither of them will say hangs over them. It hangs over them until it makes John roll onto his back. He stares, unseeing, up at the ceiling, and Paul realizes that there’s a version of himself that knows John will never say the thing that might get him rejected first, but Paul realizes that, in this moment, he’s in Greece, hiding from a life-altering rumour: he can’t take any more rejection than the one looming over him either. 

They’re stuck; Paul can feel it. He thinks to himself:  _ stop breaking this, stop breaking this, stop breaking this _ , but he can’t force himself to speak. He realizes he’ll have to live the rest of his life this way: like a liar, like a sneak.  _ Silently _ and  _ in shame _ . 

\--

It’s strange; Paul knows he’s alone before he even opens his eyes. 

He rolls onto his back, looks up at the white plaster ceiling and realizes that it must be a beautiful morning: the light is golden all around him, he can hear crashing waves through an opened window somewhere. He glances to his left and he’s proven right: the space in the bed where John had been is empty. John never wakes up first. Paul wonders if he even slept at all. 

There’s a radio on down low in the kitchen. Paul tracks it through the villa until he’s met with Mal’s broad back in front of the stove, whistling to a tune that Paul doesn’t recognize. It’s nice: faint and Greek, hardly there over the static of the space between them and the radio satellite. They’ll have to bring more records up with them next time. 

Paul pulls one of the chairs out from the table. The legs against the hardwood is enough for Mal to notice; he looks away from his cooking, over his shoulder, and smiles at Paul meekly. “Morning,” he mumbles. 

“Hiya, Mal,” Paul says back. He rests his elbows up on the table and sighs heavily. “What are you making for us, then?”

Mal shrugs. “Nothing special,” he says. “Some eggs, bit of sausage.” He pauses. There’s something on his mind, but Paul doesn’t want to hear about it, so he glances out across the sitting room, through the big bay windows and catches John and Neil out in the water together. 

John’s out far enough that the water comes up to his middle. He splashes some water up onto his arms, his chest, clearly wanting to get used to the temperature. Then, Neil gives him a shove, nearly throwing him off balance and face-first into the Aegean waves. John gapes at Neil for just a moment, before they both start laughing. Paul can hear John’s voice in his head: calling Neil every name under the sun, and it makes Paul smile. 

John’s always loved the water. The water’s always changed him. He found home in crashing waves. Paul thinks there must be something comforting in the way that water always comes back to him. It’s a constant, natural thing that John never has to think about. It just  _ is _ . 

Paul remembers going down to the docks with John nearly every day after Julia had died. They hadn’t meant to wander there, but John always led them there anyway. They’d cling to the black, steel handrails and never say a word to one another. John would just watch the waves come in and out. There’s music in waves, Paul suddenly realizes. He wonders if Julia had taught him to find rhythm in everything. 

Paul glances back to Mal and realizes he’s been caught staring. He blinks away, returns his gaze down to the wood farmer’s table in front of him. “They look like they’re having fun,” Paul observes quietly. 

Mal shrugs, placing a plate in front of Paul. Then, it’s his turn to give them a watch. “John’s in one of his moods,” Mal admits. “He needed something to do so Neil took him outside.”

Paul looks back at John, out in the sea, and sees him differently. He isn’t just a lad having fun; he’s there because he needs to be. Just like he’d needed to be down at the Liverpool docks when he was eighteen.

“Has he eaten?” Paul asks and hates how much he sounds like his own mother. 

“Some toast,” Mal allows. “Said he wasn’t hungry.”

It all points to one thing: John’s nerves. It shouldn’t please him, but it does. He’d woken up feeling so different, so alone, it might have been worse if John had just been able to get on. But he hasn’t. Paul wonders how long John lay in bed, awake, his head running away with him, before he decided he needed the melodic returning of waves. 

Paul hurts; it means something that John hurts too. It means that neither of them want this thing between them to stay broken. 

“Is there coffee?” Paul asks. Mal nods in response. “I should take some out for him.”

Mal gets to work, he does what he does best. He pours John a cup of coffee and hands it off to Paul. Mug in hand, Paul scoops up his carton of cigarettes on his way out. He trudges through the sand, until the waves start to lap up at his toes, soaking the ends of his linen pants. 

Still chatting with Neil, John casually turns, then goes still when he sees Paul approaching them. They look at one another and Paul feels stuck again: neither of them want to make the first move. Neither of them want to ask for forgiveness in case the other isn’t willing to give it yet. It’s this game they’ve always played. But, Paul realizes that John’s been brave. In his own way, John’s been brave, telling him about Brian and  _ Stuart _ . Paul suddenly wonders if he’s the only other man left on this earth that knows that fact. 

Paul wants to be brave too. He wants to make the first move. So, he raises the mug in the air, as some kind of peace offering. “I’ve brought coffee.”

John glances at Neil, then back to Paul. He sees it for what it really is. Neil doesn’t. Neil staggers through the waves towards the shore and sarcastically asks: “Only one mug?” John starts to follow him towards the beach. “Wow,” he intones. “I’ll just get me own, then?”

It makes John laugh and Paul’s glad for it. His smile alone makes Paul smile back. 

When they’re close enough, Paul hands John the mug of coffee. Rolling his eyes, Neil continues past them, towards the kitchen. When they’re alone, Paul shakes his carton of cigarettes. “Smoke break?” he asks. 

John nods and accepts what Paul’s offering. He leans forward, cigarette between his lips, puffs at it while Paul lights it, then he inhales deeply and sighs, looking out over the sea. He looks calm and Paul hopes it isn’t just the water and the smoke doing it, he hopes he’s got something to do with it too. 

“I didn’t hear you get up this morning,” Paul says quietly.

John nods. “I did well, then.”

Paul sighs. He realizes he’s verging on losing him. His hands feel numb at the prospect. He can’t think of anything to say and he’s never been without words with John. He can’t be -- it would flip everything on its axis and Paul can’t have that -- not now. He wants John here, next to him, physically and emotionally. He  _ needs _ him here, even if it frightens him. 

“Something went off between us last night,” Paul decides to say. John goes tense next to him, and he keeps his eyes out on the sea. He doesn’t argue the point, so Paul tacks on: “I don’t like it.”

“Yeah,” John allows. He sips at his coffee, so Paul reaches out and tugs at his elbow, trying to pull John back into his orbit. They should slot together, but they don’t. 

“I don’t like not saying what I mean,” Paul tells him and it makes John meet him somewhere in the middle. With his fingers still clinging to John’s forearm, he feels John shift towards him, expectant and keen. “You don’t frighten me,” Paul continues. John swallows hard, seeing acceptance where it’s running abundantly. “You never have. I don’t know why you did last night.” John takes a long drag of his cigarette. He looks about ready to speak, but Paul realizes he isn’t finished. “I think I must have known about you and Brian. It didn’t surprise me. It just surprised me that you’d said it. That you’d finally  _ told me _ it happened.”

John nods. “I’m not daft, you know,” he whispers. “I get why you’d be afraid. Having everyone think you’re a queer. It’s  _ horrible _ . And it’s worse when it’s true.” He pauses, then steals a glance up at Paul. “You really think it might be true?”

Paul sighs, decides John’s been right all along: there is something quite calming about the waves in front of them. He listens to the music in them and decides to be brave. He nods, and hears John inhale sharply next to him. But no words come tumbling out after it. Though, Paul knows John’s dying to ask him a question. He hears John’s venom from last night:  _ Is it Bob Fraser? _ And it makes Paul laugh. 

“And it hasn’t got anything to do with Robert, ya git,” he says.

John laughs, but Paul can hear the relief in it. “Who’s it got to do with?”

Paul feels his chest go tight and his first instinct tells him to lie, so he says: “Not sure.” John starts to nod and Paul feels them edging back towards where they’d ended up last night. Next to one another in bed, with endless space between them. “You, mainly,” he says, and something lifts off of him as the words leave him. He immediately feels so much lighter. He looks at John, who’s eyes have gone down to his feet in the sand. Paul stays there, watching him, hoping that John will look at him and that he can pass some of this lightness his way. But John won’t, he’s frozen in place, and Paul wonders if he’s read it all wrong, if John didn’t actually want to hear those words. He wants to take it all back, but knows it has to be laid bare, so he presses forward: “John?” he asks. “Will you say anything?”

“Well, I don’t know what to say, do I?” John manages, and he sounds like the wind’s been knocked out of him. 

“In a bad way?” Paul ventures and he realizes there’s something rising in him, something that can’t be calmed by the rushing waves. 

“In a…” Paul holds his breath and  _ waits _ . “No, not in a bad way,” John decides on, because he must realize he can’t articulate what he’s really feeling in this moment, just like Paul can’t. Paul’s suddenly glad that they’re here together: speechless, honest, and wanting. 

Maybe that’s enough for now. Paul realizes he hadn’t actually known what he’d been expecting from this. Had he hoped for anything more than just acknowledging the thing between them? Had he hoped that they might say:  _ I want you _ , in as many words. 

He glances down at his wristwatch and sees that it isn’t even ten in the morning. They had time to venture into this further. And maybe it was better to do so under the cover of nighttime. 

\--

Paul can’t remember the last time he’s had a real moment’s peace. Curled up in bed, he’s found it. His eyes are halfway down the page in his book, blankets up to his middle, he realizes he can’t hear the sounds of the girls that constantly wait outside his Cavendish home. The Greek island is still and silent around him; all that’s left are the lapping waves and the low conversation happening downstairs. Paul hears John laugh and it makes him smile; he realizes he’s been reading the same line over and over.

He buckles down, pushes the sound of John’s voice out of his head and pushes forward. He flips the page and misses the footsteps coming up the stairs, coming closer to the door. Over the top of his book, he sees John appear in the doorway and he feels all his breath leave him. John stays where he is, hovering awkwardly by the doorjamb, but he smiles when he sees Paul looking. 

Like some second wave of bravery has passed over him, John steps into the room, and he very slowly, very deliberately, pulls the door shut behind him. Mal and Neil’s voices disappear to nothing. All Paul can hear anyway is the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. John won’t take his eyes off of him and it makes him feel hot and scrutinized. He sits up a little straighter and drops his book down at his side. He must look keen because it makes John chuckle lightly. 

“You have a minute, Paulie?” John asks. Paul furrows his brow at him, but nods emphatically. “You aren’t about to fall asleep, are you?”

“No,” Paul manages. 

John nods. There’s a moment of hesitation, then he reaches back and twists the lock on the door shut. Paul watches his hand return back to hang somewhere at his side. Paul’s never been sure if it was his love of John’s music, his guitar-playing, but he’s always thought that John had beautiful hands. And when he’s using them so purposefully, Paul can’t keep his eyes off of them. 

John comes to Paul’s side of the bed. He takes Paul’s book and sets it down on the nightstand, before he sits down on the edge of the mattress. Paul shifts closer to him. 

“I think I’ve figured out what I’d wanted to say to you this morning on the beach,” John tells him. Paul nods, edges even closer, and thinks:  _ sod it _ , he reaches out and touches his fingertips to John’s knee. “I’ve spent a long time telling myself that you could never be like me,” he says, and it makes Paul sigh sadly.  _ How long? _ How long had they both been too afraid to let go of this secret, not realizing the other was holding onto it just as dearly? “Realizing that you  _ could _ , or -- Or, that you  _ are _ , I dunno…” He offers a light laugh and finally looks up at Paul properly. “Well, I think my brain might have short-circuited, or something.” Paul laughs too. “I very rarely don’t have anything to say.” Paul nods in agreement, still smiling reassuringly. “I just --... I’m having a hard time --” He shakes his head at himself and Paul moves quicker than he’d thought he might: he takes his hand from John’s knee and wraps it around his fingers instead, giving his hand a tight squeeze. “I’ve wanted to be with -- I’ve  _ been with _ … Other men. But you were first, you see.” He sighs heavily, admitting to something he’s kept closed since he was seventeen. “You were first,” he repeats. Paul fights the urge to kiss him, just like he’d fought it in India. “But it wasn’t  _ real _ , you know? It wasn’t something that could ever  _ happen _ , so I made myself alright with that. It was alright: I could be your friend, I could sing with you, I could write with you, but if you…” John swallows hard and Paul realizes what he’s doing: he’s saying the thing that could get him rejected first. It sends something electric through him. Their eyes meet and Paul wonders how they’ve ever felt like two separate people. “Well, I’d do more,” John confesses. “If you really wanted to.”

Before Paul can think too much about it, he presses his lips to John’s. He closes his eyes and loses track of where he is; all that’s around him is John -- he could be anywhere. He thinks of all the cities, all the rooms, he’s wanted to do this in. They all stand up around him and he realizes it doesn’t matter. How long they’ve waited to do this doesn’t matter, so long as it was happening now. 

Paul pulls away first and, for a moment, John follows him. He opens his eyes to see why they’ve stopped, so Paul tells him: “I want to,” and it makes something go bright in John’s eyes. Something new that Paul’s never seen before. He feels himself go giddy at the prospect: that there were still new things to be discovered about John. 

John kisses him again: it’s something desparate and gracious and Paul realizes he wants him to slow down. This won’t end before John’s ready for it to. This won’t be dangled in front of him and then taken away. This wasn’t some fluke longshot paying off. This was something he deserved. 

He’s back against the headboard, John in his lap, before he finds the words: “Wait, wait,” he manages, and he feels John tense up on top of him, so he sets his hands down on John’s waist and holds him there. “It’s alright,” he coos and it seems to make John relax. “Just…” He’s suddenly afraid that he’ll embarrass John, so instead of telling him to slow down, Paul just shows him. 

He kisses him again and keeps it all slow and tender and John follows his lead. He runs his hand up the side of John’s shirt, his fingers slotting against his ribcage and John makes a noise Paul’s never heard him make. It’s content, long-awaited, and Paul suddenly wonders how long it’s been since someone touched John this way. Paul closes his eyes; he’s glad that he can be this person for John. He feels John’s lips leave his own and start to track down his jawline, his throat, and across his collarbone. Digging his fingertips deeper into the meat of John’s thighs, he’s  _ so glad _ he can be this person. 

His eyes still closed, the real John Lennon right in front of him, Paul misses the way John’s moved lower and lower, because he can’t stop imagining the way loving John every day might feel. He’s got John on top of him, kissing and nipping at his hip bone, and all he can think about is waking up next to him on a Sunday morning, cooking on the woodstove at his farm in Scotland, singing a love song to him from across a microphone. 

He’s pulled so roughly out of the daydream when he feels John palming him through his briefs. His eyes shoot open and he looks down at John, now nestled between his legs, smiling up at him, because he realizes he must have said some sort of expletive without meaning to. He feels himself go hot and pink and  _ hates _ the way John seems to be revelling in it. 

“Jesus, John,” Paul manages and it makes John laugh. “Get right to the point, why don’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you like me to?” John teases, tugging at the waistband of Paul’s brief until Paul can’t take it anymore. It’s the truth, anyway, they’ve both waited long enough for this, why should that continue? He bucks his hips forward and John knows his cue when he sees it. 

Paul suddenly feels like a teenager again. Everything’s happening again for the first time. He cards his fingers through John’s hair and realizes it’s a man on top of him. It’s  _ John _ . He doesn’t just feel like a teenager again, he  _ is _ one. It’s all new and exciting, and the best thing that’s ever happened to him. 

He gets there about as quick as he had as a teenager too, but John doesn’t seem to mind, hell, Paul thinks he’ll never let him forget it. He sees stars behind his shut eyes as he comes and loses where John is. Everything is just a part of him. He feels so whole and loved, he doesn’t want to move.

He comes back to himself, grounding himself against the soft sheets of the villa in Greece. He remembers where he is, who he is, and who he’s with. He opens his eyes, finally realizing that he can control his own gulping breaths, and John’s laying next to him, his chin on Paul’s shoulder and he’s just watching him. He watches the Paul he’s built slowly turn back into the Paul he knows. He gives Paul’s shoulder a sweet kiss, as if to say:  _ there you are _ , and Paul realizes he’s never really known who he actually is, until this moment. 

“Fucking hell,” he mutters, because what he really wants to say is:  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ . John laughs and buries his nose into Paul’s chest. 

Paul rolls onto his side and it forces John to look up at him. Paul thinks it again:  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ , and he wonders if John thinks the same thing, because his eyes suddenly dart down to a spot on Paul’s chest and he says: “I’ve been holding out on you.”

“I see that now,” Paul says, allowing him the deflection.  _ Baby steps _ , he thinks. 

He edges towards John and slots his knee between John’s. It opens his hips just enough for Paul to fit himself even closer. He threads his hand between the cotton pillow and John’s cheek and pulls him closer for a kiss. He can feel John smiling through it. With his free hand, he lets himself tug at the drawstring of John’s sweats. John must know what’s coming because he stops smiling, even has to pull away from the kiss to gasp lightly against Paul’s chest. 

With his hand beneath the linen, John goes pliant beneath Paul’s touch. It makes Paul want him even more. 

John’s breaths start coming out in short gasps; Paul tries to kiss him to gobble up the noises he’s making. If he’s being clumsy about it, John surenly isn’t letting him feel embarrassed. They’re nearly chest-to-chest when John comes, clinging to the front of Paul’s shirt like his life depended on it. And then, he just lays there, soaking it in, and when he presses two kisses to Paul’s collarbone, Paul realizes that gratitude is back. 

John looks up at him and Paul suddenly hears John’s words running back to him:  _ I need to see your eyes to know when you’re lying to me _ . And he realizes that, in this moment, words would always fail. He knows what he should say --  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ \-- but he’s afraid. So, he kisses John instead. One hand in John’s hair, the other tugging him as close as their bodies will allow, he kisses him. He hopes John will hear what he’s saying anyway. 

\--

It’s just Neil down in the kitchen when Paul wakes up the following morning. Yawning, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, he doesn’t even have time to ask where everybody is, before Neil tells him: “They’ve gone out for a bit of shopping.” Paul nods, but he can’t seem to think of anything they might need. He sets himself down at the kitchen table and Neil must sense the follow-up question, because he tacks on with a grin: “And by shopping, I mean the lot of us polished off the rest of the wine while you were up in bed last night.”

“Ah,” Paul says, smiling back. “That explains why John came to bed so early.”

“He was really torn up about it,” Neil agrees.

They smile at one another before Neil turns back to the coffee on the stove. When it’s finished, he places a cup in front of Paul and sits down opposite him. 

It’s a grey morning, but grey in a nice way. They’re on the edge of a storm, but it doesn’t look like it will reach them. It’s the sort of morning that makes you love the sun even more. It makes yesterday seem even brighter. He thinks of John, without even meaning to. He thinks of him in the water in the morning, standing close to him on the beach, never much more than a foot away from him in the sitting room, and finally, in bed next to him. Smiling at him because he’s realized they’re both exactly where they’ve always wanted to be. 

“I must have done well with the coffee,” Neil observes proudly. Paul realizes he’s started to smile. He thinks of John again, wherever he is now, next to Mal, doing the shopping and his smile grows. He hides his face behind the mug and nods. 

“It’s good, yeah,” he allows. 

Neil smiles back at him, but Paul can tell he doesn’t know what’s got him so giddy. And how could he? Paul had lied to his face. He realizes how much he still hates that he’s done that. He hates feeling this happy without being to tell his mate why. And it’s not just about John. He feels this happy because he’s finally allowed himself to be the sort of man he is. He’d felt free and light in a way he never had before. He’d felt brave and strong and more compassionate for himself than ever. 

He thinks of himself on that plane in New Dehli -- next to Mal and afraid that his friend might not love him anymore and being proven so wrong. He thinks Neil would have proven him wrong, too. Just like John had, or Brian, or that Rings and George will when he plucks up the courage to tell them. 

“You know,” Paul says, trying to suppress that smile now, because he knows he’s got to make sure Neil knows he’s serious. “While it’s just the two of us, I think I’d like to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” Neil asks. He sets his mug down and leans slightly forward, intently listening. 

“Well,” Paul manages, then has to wonder if he’s lost the nerve. He swallows hard and thinks of the version of himself that had just kissed John. Who had just  _ done it _ , even though he’d been afraid. “Suppose the book was right.”

“The book?” Neil asks, then he must seem to remember what’s brought them all here in the first place. He goes a bit stoic, sits up a little straighter. He offers Paul a minute nod. “The book, right, yeah.”

“Well, suppose it was right,” Paul repeats because he thinks Neil’s missed it. 

“As in?”

“As in,” Paul tries. He chews on the inside of his cheek and shrugs helplessly. “As in, I’m --... Well, I don’t know what I am, but…” He shrugs again, because he isn’t ready to call himself a homosexual, in fact, he isn’t sure he ever would be, but he’d kissed John last night. He’d kissed him and he’d  _ liked it _ . It made him  _ something _ . 

_ A queer _ , some voice deep inside of him spits back. He wishes it was John’s voice, or Brian’s, calling him that word with something a little more prideful, but the voice makes it hurt.  _ Still _ . 

“Like Eppy?” Neil supplies for him and Paul immediately shakes his head. It’s too quick a response, it’s something founded on shame and disgust, no matter the fact that he  _ isn’t _ like Brian. He shouldn’t be so happy about it. He realizes he wants to say:  _ like John _ . Whatever John is, I am too. “What about Jane?”

“Well, I still  _ like _ girls,” Paul says, mostly just to hear his own voice so he doesn’t have to  _ think _ about Jane. Not yet, anyway. “I reckon I just like both.”

“Men and women?” Neil clarifies and Paul suddenly feels trapped between being angry with Neil for making him come right out and say it and gracious that he’s making him put the words to this. 

“Yes,” Paul answers, feeling himself start to go pink. “ _ Both _ .”

There’s a pause and Paul can’t read it. He looks up at Neil and he sees his head running away with him behind his eyes. It makes Paul breathe a little quicker. 

“So,” Neil manages to say. “When I said it was all shite and you agreed with me?”

“It was a lie,” Paul tells him. 

Neil curses under his breath and looks out towards the bay windows through the sitting room. He shakes his head as if he can’t believe it and Paul knows it’s wrong, but he feels the need to say: “I’m sorry,” and when he shuts his mouth, he realizes that Neil’s just said the same thing to him. “You’re sorry?” Paul asks. “What for?”

“Well, I made you feel like you had to lie, didn’t I?” he says, and he’s gone just as embarrassed with it as Paul has, but it makes Paul sigh with relief: he realizes that they’ve been having two different conversations. “That’s a horrible thing,” he chastises, and he  _ means _ it, so Paul reaches across the table for him. 

“Nell, it’s alright,” he tells him and Neil looks up at him so quickly, so apologetically. “You didn’t know, nobody knew.” Neil starts to nod, but he doesn’t look wholly convinced. “I don’t know why I lied,” Paul says. “I suppose I’ve just gotten used to lying to everybody else, it just came out.”

“I’m still sorry,” Neil says. He lifts his mug off the table, runs his thumb along the handle and doesn’t know what else to say. “But I’m glad you’ve told me now,” he says. 

Paul nods, manages a weak ‘thank you’, and it must sound frightened, because Neil looks up at him and realizes that he has to be the strong one, so he offers Paul a reassuring smile and it looks just like the one he gives him every night before a show:  _ fuck this up, and I’ll still be here when you come back. _

_ A queer _ , another voice tells him.  _ That’s what you are and now people know _ . 

It feels good for them to know. 

The front door swings open and Mal and John come blustering inside, fondly arguing with one another as they come deeper into the villa. John stops cold when he sees that Paul’s awake and sitting down at the table. He looks to Mal, who does the same, then has to fight off a grin. John’s told him -- Paul can see that clear as day and it makes him smile more than it frightens him. He figures that has to be progress. 

“Morning,” John tries, going for casual, hoisting a brown paper bag up on the table. Mal stifles a laugh to let John know he  _ isn’t _ subtle. 

“Morning,” Paul says back and it comes out a little too pleased with himself because John pauses, his eyes flicker upward to look at Paul through his lashes and he smiles. Something coy and knowing and it makes something settle in Paul’s stomach, something he knows will have to wait there until that evening. 

\--

John joins him in the kitchen while Paul’s making dinner. He settles next to Paul against the counter, and watches Paul stirring the pasta sauce at the stove. Paul glances at him and he notices that John isn’t actually looking at him. Paul watches him cross his arms over his chest, even crosses his legs at the ankles. His cheeks have gone a bit pink and he’s chewing at his bottom lip. He’s nervous and Paul doesn’t know why. 

“Anything I can do to help?” he manages to ask. 

Finally, John glances up at him, and Paul feels his heart catch in his throat. Everything around him goes warm. John’s eyes are so soft, and when they meet, they finally seem to have some confidence behind them, and Paul loves it. Paul thinks he must look taken aback because John grins at him and shifts a little closer. 

“Er,” Paul stammers. He looks back down at the stovetop, stirring at the sauce, because he’s afraid that the heat of his blush might burn it. “Well, I suppose you could chop us up some parsley,” he says. 

John smiles, finds the herb on the kitchen table and points at it. “Some of that stuff?”

Paul nods without looking and he’s glad that John has to step away from him, if only for a moment because it allows him to take in a deep breath. 

He isn’t allowed much more than that before John’s next to him again, now along with a knife and cutting board. They stand next to one another, preparing dinner, and Paul feels something settle deep inside of him. It needles in under his chest and finds home there, and he’s glad it has. It makes him feel whole, the way love always does. 

Next to him, he senses John go still. Then, he feels John’s eyes on him. He realizes that he’s felt this way before, he’s felt John’s eyes on him exactly this way before, but he’d ignored it. He wonders:  _ am I ready for my life to change? _ And before he can allow himself a moment to answer, he looks at John anyway, because he’s finished being afraid, especially of John. 

They look into one another. Then, Paul thinks it ought to happen quicker, but John leans towards him and kisses him lightly. It’s a slow thing, made even more special by how deliberately John is choosing to do it. He isn’t allowing himself to act and ask questions later. He’s asking and answering:  _ I want this. _ And Paul thinks that he ought to be just as purposeful too. So, he thinks,  _ touch him _ and decides where John needs it most. He sets his open palm against John’s chest and he feels it make John breathe a little easier. Then, he digs his fingers into the loose fabric of John’s shirt and tugs him even closer. It’s something playful and obvious and it makes Paul feel like he’s back in Hamburg wanting and getting kissed any way he’d like to. 

John pulls away first. Keeping his eyes low, he licks his lips, then laughs. “Alright,” he manages. “That’s enough of that,” he mumbles, then picks up the knife again to get back to work, but he’s still smiling. Paul suddenly loves how fair he is; he can see the blush down his throat and chest.

“Right,” Paul agrees. 

Then, John snickers and Paul feels John kick at his shin lightly. Paul laughs back and keeps his eyes down on the task in front of him. He thinks that if he looks at John again, he won’t be able to stop kissing him. John must think the same thing, because they both spend dinner blushing across the table at one another.

By the time they finish eating, they’ve both had two glasses of wine and when John stands to take his plate to the sink, he takes Paul’s too, and as he passes by him, he lets his hand trail a line across the base of his neck. It makes Paul shiver, even more so when he glances up at Mal, who’s very pointedly looking elsewhere. Paul glances at Neil, who obliviously polishes off his glass of wine. 

Then, Paul watches John at the sink. He shifts his weight from one foot to another, rolls up his sleeves and starts to run the hot water. He tucks some of his fringe behind his ear and Paul feels himself smiling. It makes his stomach flip; that something so small and casual can make him realize: he’s got it bad. 

John touches him whenever he can. They sit next to one another on the sofa while the four of them watch television. John ends up with his feet in Paul’s lap and Paul traces lazy circles along his calf and ankle bone. Nobody seems to notice, and John looks as though he’s living in a world where this is something that they do every night. Paul decides to live in that world too. It feels better that way. 

He continues to live that way when they all make their way upstairs for bed. Paul follows John into the washcloset to brush his teeth and  _ lives that way _ . He wraps his arms around John’s waits and burrows his nose into the crook of John’s neck. John laughs around his toothbrush, then gives the back of Paul’s hand gently. It’s a silent command to let go and Paul loves this version of themselves: the ones who can understand one another without saying anything at all. 

Paul lets him go, lets him rise out his mouth in the sink, but keeps his fingers against John’s waistband. When he’s finished, John turns towards him. He sets his hands on top of Paul’s, pressing them deeper against his hips. He sits back against the sink and pulls Paul with him. 

“Ready for bed, then?” John asks. 

“Mhmm,” Paul hums back.

John nods, kisses him, then drags his nose along Paul’s jawline. “Well, go on,” he says into Paul’s skin and it sends a shiver down his spine. Paul pulls away just enough to catch John’s eyes and something daring, challenging, glimmers in them. So, Paul kisses him the way he knows John wants to be kissed. He lets his thumb run across John’s cheekbone, then lets his hand rest at the nape of John’s neck, tugging at his hair there. John hums into the back of his throat and Paul realizes he’s done for. 

He pulls away, hardly has time to step backward, before John shifts past him, heading for the bedroom. His fingers brush across the waistband of Paul’s sweats and he knows he’s meant to follow. 

It’s Paul’s turn to shut and lock the door behind them and he sees John swallow hard at the prospect of finally being alone, together, again. Paul takes a step towards him and it must be enough to give John a little extra courage, because he steps towards Paul, too, and they meet somewhere in the middle. John’s hands immediately find their place: one of Paul’s hip and the other on his chest. Paul feels a little less sure of his place in all this -- he puts his hands on John’s waist, then his arms, then his chest, wanting to touch John everywhere, their lips still pressed together, like they might never be able to do this again. 

John takes a step backward, towards the bed, pulling Paul along with him. He can’t believe what year it is; he can’t believe how quickly he’s fallen back into following John into anything. John tugs his shirt off over his head then nips a line across Paul’s collarbone. He takes in everything; he’s seen Paul half-naked loads of times before, but he’s looking at him as if this is all new, as if he can’t believe it. 

John starts to tug at the drawstring of his sweats before Paul realizes he needs to help John catch up. 

He paws at the hem of John’s shirt and John must know he’s nervous, because he puts some space between them and pulls his own shirt off his shoulders. Then, he takes Paul’s hand and puts it where he likes it, hitched over the dip of his waist. He inhales deeply when he takes his hand off of Paul’s and Paul keeps it there anyway.

John sits them down on the bed, climbs on top of Paul, slowly and gently, as if this thing between them might break if either of them moved too fast. He pushes at the loosened waistband of Paul’s pants, forces himself to stop kissing Paul for long enough to pull them down and off his ankles. He presses a kiss against the inside of Paul’s thigh. It tickles enough to make Paul giggle. John pauses, looks up at him and grins. He pushes Paul’s legs slightly further apart and presses another soft kiss to the inside of his knee. 

“Enough of that,” Paul tells him through a laugh, tugging the bare skin of his thigh away from the stubble on John’s jaw. John laughs with him too, but he listens when Paul tells him: “Come back up here.”

“You’re bossy everywhere, then?” John whispers. 

Paul rolls his eyes, tells him: “Only where you’re concerned.”

Hovering a few inches over Paul’s face, John’s glasses slip down his nose. He moves to press them back up, but Paul stops him, he reaches up and lifts the glasses off his ears. With nothing between them, Paul loses himself somewhere in Paul’s eyes. He takes a deep breath and realizes that John’s made him feel this way ever since they met; he wonders how long he’ll continue being the pool Paul can drown in. 

“You look beautiful,” Paul tells him before he means to. 

John’s mouth twitches into a frown, only for a moment, then he starts to blush. His eyes flicker downward, somewhere on Paul’s throat and he reaches out to trace Paul’s jawline. “You look blurry,” he says and, even though it’s a deflection, it makes Paul laugh. 

“I’m at me best, then,” Paul pokes back. 

John plants a kiss to the underside of Paul’s chin, continues upward along his jawline and settles just behind his ear. It’s a ‘thank you’, it’s a ‘you look beautiful, too’, and maybe one day, Paul would actually make him say those things out loud. 

“Paul?” John suddenly breathes into his hair. John’s hand at his side goes still. It makes Paul hold his breath. 

“Yeah?” he manages. 

“Would you like to, erm…” He stammers, swallows down whatever he might have said and burrows his nose deeper into Paul’s hair. 

“What?” Paul asks gently. He runs his hand through John’s hair, resting his open palm against John’s cheek, making him pull away enough to look at one another. John’s gone still in his hand. “What is it, Johnny?”

“Well,” John manages. “I just don’t know what you’d like to do tonight, do I?”

“What I’d like to do?” Paul asks. 

“Cor,” John mutters and Paul feels himself losing him, so Paul pulls him in for another kiss. 

“I don’t care what we do,” he tells him. He holds his face with both hands so he can’t pull away; he kisses John’s temple, then each eyelid. “Whatever you like,” he adds. 

John nods, but he looks a little distant, so Paul rolls them both over until it’s him looking down at John instead. John’s weight on top of him had made him feel alive in a way he couldn’t understand; he hoped the same would be true for John as well. He wants to say:  _ don’t disappear on me _ , but he’s too nervous about why it’s even happening in the first place to say anything. 

He pulls away and looks down at John until John can bear to look at him. He runs the back of his fingers against his cheek and thinks he ought to say  _ it’s okay _ , but he doesn’t know why. He must think it loudly enough because John lifts his head off the pillow and kisses him with everything he has. And Paul allows him to, wants him to know that he’ll stay right here as long as John wants him to be. John hitches an ankle in the bend of Paul’s knees. It forces his hips a little wider and lets Paul in a little closer. He bucks up against Paul and it makes himself whimper into Paul’s mouth. They slot into place with one another and it feels like Paul’s just gone back home. John wraps his arms around Paul’s neck, pulls Paul down against him so that they’re touching, all the way up and down. 

John pulls away, just to give himself a chance to breathe, but Paul doesn’t want to let him go, so he rests his forehead to John’s, gulping in the same air. John’s eyes go distant again, and Paul feels him trace absent lines across his chest. 

“Will you get us what’s in the nightstand?” John whispers. 

Paul furrows his brow, but he nods. He thinks he’d do just about anything John asked of him. He hangs off the edge of the bed, pulls open the drawer and it’s empty except for a tube of vaseline. He wants to laugh, but he knows he shouldn’t. He glances back at John, who’s taken to picking idly at something on the sheets. 

“John --” Paul starts. 

“Fucking Christ,” John mutters, turning to look at Paul. “Don’t make me beg.”

“I’d never,” Paul tells him and he can’t help but grin. It makes John look away, but there’s something of a smile on his face too. 

“You would though,” John pokes back. 

Paul slots himself back against John’s chest and runs his hand through his hair. “Not about this, I wouldn’t,” he promises. John rolls his eyes, but he nods, so Paul kisses the bridge of his nose graciously. “You’re sure?”

John shrugs, says: “Not anything I haven’t done before,” but he doesn’t mean it so callously. Besides, Paul knows all that it means: it’s total trust, open vulnerability, and unabashed wanting. So, Paul kisses him again, so neither of them have to say how special this moment feels, how it feels like they’re teetering over something that could shift everything between them forever. 

John presses his fingers against Paul’s chest and follows his lips when Paul tries to pull away. Paul thinks  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ , and says so with every touch, with every kiss. 

John comes undone beneath him. Paul thinks that John must have to wrap his legs so tightly around him, dig his nails into Paul’s biceps so deeply, to keep from falling apart entirely. Paul sucks a bruise onto the side of John’s throat because he’s afraid he’ll say those three words out loud if he doesn’t give his mouth something to do. He thinks that John might say them, but it’s so breathless and private a thing that Paul isn’t sure he should bring any attention to it. 

Paul feels like he’s a crashing wave; he’ll come back for this moment, for John, forever. He crests, and wonders what this must make John. The moon, probably. The thing that will push and pull. The thing that always has a light and a dark side. The thing in the sky that Paul had loved in Liverpool, in Paris, in Rishikesh, and finally, in Lesbos, where he’d finally been allowed to be doused in moonlight. 

John laughs lightly against his chest when they’ve both caught their breaths, but there isn’t much humour in it. Paul holds his breath and waits to hear what he might find so funny. 

“Suppose you can’t really deny the whole thing anymore, can you?” he says. He glances up at Paul and offers a wry apologetic smile. Paul huffs out a small laugh of his own. He shifts, hugging John closer against him and wishes he could tell him that he doesn’t want to deny it now anyway. When they’re alone together, now that the dam’s been broken, he’d never want to deny himself again, but the thought of anyone  _ looking _ , of anyone seeing them and hating them, it still frightened him. “You probably still should though, aye?” John adds, and Paul realizes that it frightens him too. 

“Yeah,” Paul mutters into John’s hair. “Probably.”

It hurts, the way a bit of whiplash hurts, that he’s just seen John at his bravest and now… Now, he was afraid. It makes something shift and needle at his heart behind his ribcage. He realizes that he’ll just have to get used to the coexistence of these two feelings: the one clawing at him, strangling him right now, and the freeing one with John beneath him. 

“I reckon I would,” John says. “If it was me instead of you.” Paul looks down at John and John won’t look up at him; Paul realizes that this isn’t just John telling him this, it’s him asking for it. Paul starts to nod, but he must have waited too long, because John’s nerves feel the need to fill the silence up with something. “I know it’s different now that it’s  _ legal _ , but when the hounds started asking questions about me and Brian, we just ignored ‘em, you know, like saying anything, yes or no, would just make the fire bigger.”

“Right,” Paul says, seeing Brian in his mind. Telling Paul to stay in India, not to worry. Brian had had the same plan here, too. Then, Paul pictures John alone in Brian’s office, and he wonders if John wanted to run away too. Where would he have run to? It makes Paul feel sick that John had been that afraid and hadn’t said a word about it -- it makes him feel sick that they’d all poked fun at him for it. 

“You think it was the coward’s way out,” John observes off of Paul’s lack of response. 

“ _ No _ \--” Paul promises, but he isn’t allowed to go much further. 

“Because you don’t know what you’ll say until that question’s shoved in your face,” John defends.

“I’ll deny it,” Paul assures him. “I know I will, same as you.”

John must believe him because he starts to soften. He nods against Paul’s chest and Paul feels him exhale a shaky sigh. “It’s easier to deny it than you think it is,” he says. “You’ve been doing it all your life, anyroad. It’s just what comes out, until you actively decide to tell the truth.” It’s been horrible, living this way. Paul realizes how much he’s hated this denial, this guilt, this shame. He’d gotten so accustomed to it, the weight of it, he’d never expected how lightweight he’d feel when he’d finally allowed himself to shed it. He doesn’t  _ want _ to crawl back inside of it. He doesn’t want to don it and fold in on himself under the weight of it all. “I didn’t want to tell the truth,” John adds, and Paul realizes that he’s already back underneath it. They’re alone, together, but there’s a blanket of shame between them now. 

“And you don’t want me to tell it now,” Paul affirms. 

John scoffs, knowing full-well that Paul’s caught this for what it is: it isn’t advice, it’s a plea. “Not really,” he allows.

Paul takes a deep breath in, John rises with his chest. Then, John’s hand is flat against his abdomen, bearing his weight as he pulls himself up to sit. Paul follows him because he can tell John doesn’t want to be alone. John twists at the middle, fishes for a cigarette in the pockets of his discarded jeans, but before he can turn back around to look at Paul, Paul shuffles closer to him, wraps his arms around his middle and places a soft kiss to the freckles on his shoulder. John goes still beneath him. 

“I don’t think you’re a coward,” Paul says into his shoulder blade, because John hadn’t let him say it before. John takes a deep, shaky breath in, but can’t say anything back, so Paul assures him: “I  _ don’t _ .” Slowly, John starts to nod. He throws a glance over his shoulder at Paul and offers a gracious smile that just makes Paul feel sad, then he hands Paul a cigarette. 

It’s a ‘thank you’, it’s a peace offering. Paul takes it, shifts back to his side of the bed and realizes: it isn’t enough. 

He wants to live in a world where neither of them are afraid. He wants to be a version of himself that hadn’t run away from this. He wants to be nineteen again and just kissing John when he’d wanted to. He’d come too close to loving the version of himself on this Greek island, but he realizes it isn’t real. It meant nothing, because there was still an album to be recorded, press to be bothered by, and Jane Asher… 

“I think we should go back to London,” Paul says when he’s back against the headboard. John mirrors him, sucking at his cigarette. He looks at Paul and tries to read whatever this must mean, but he can’t, so he just says: “Okay.”

\--

Mal goes ahead to the airport to buy their tickets to London. 

John is quiet on the boat to the mainland. 

It’s still quite early by the time they dock. Their car hasn’t arrived, so they aimlessly pace back-and-forth while they wait. Across the docks, Paul sees the little shop he and Mal had stopped into on their journey over. It makes him smile. Then, he sees the same little girl who’d tugged him down for an autograph. She smiles broadly, gives him a shy little wave, then she tugs at her mother’s skirt above her. She points to him, and he watches the mother’s face go sour. He stops smiling with her, sees her tug the little girl deeper into the shop. 

Something heavy lands in his stomach. He suddenly feels more eyes on him than he’d noticed. He tries to catch people looking, but they seem to keep their eyes away when he looks their direction. 

He stalks across the dock towards a news stand. 

“Where you going?” he hears John ask, but he ignores him. 

People seem to part, nobody even asks him for money when he tears a newspaper from the stand and turns away from the shopkeeper to read it. It’s in Greek, he can’t understand a word of it, but there’s a photo of him near the bottom of the front page. It’s an older photo, from their early days; he’s smiling widely for the camera. He thinks of Tony Sheridan, who around the time this photo must have been taken, had loudly asked: “He a fag, or something?” based on nothing more than the way he looked: well-groomed, feminine.

He feels John’s weight against his back, peering over Paul’s shoulder. “I’m in the newspaper,” Paul tells him dumbly. 

Paul glances up at John, catches him swallowing something down nervously, but then he steels himself. He matches Paul’s eye and shrugs easily. “You’re always in the paper.”

“People won’t look at me,” Paul insists, gesturing across the dock. 

“With a mug like that --”

“I’m serious,” Paul says, shoving the newspaper into John’s chest. John clings to the paper to keep it from scattering out across the cobblestones. He finds the offending article and he  _ must _ see what Paul sees, but still, he just shrugs again. “I can’t read it,” he says and Paul just scoffs at him, because he  _ knows _ John’s smart, he  _ knows _ John’s intuitive, and he  _ knows _ he, himself, has never been known to be paranoid. “Don’t get in a twist, Macca,” John tells him. “We don’t know what it says.”

“I know  _ exactly _ what it says,” Paul seethes. He wants to give John a shake. He wants John to be just as angry and afraid as he is. And maybe he is, because his eyes are darting across the dock now, at things over Paul’s shoulder. Paul knows he’s seeing this for what it is. Then, he gives something a little nod, and grabs a hold of Paul’s bicep and drags him back towards where they’d come.

“Get in the car,” he tells Paul, and Paul finally sees that it’s Neil John had nodded to, an opened car door and he realizes just how badly he wants to disappear behind steel and glossy paint. 

Paul imagines that the dull ringing in his ears will go away as soon as the car door slams shut behind them, but it doesn’t. It just rings louder and louder, and his chest starts to heave up and down. It’s so bloody loud. It’s so cramped in the back of the car. He rolls the window down for some fresh air and rests his forehead against the glass. 

“What’s happened?” he hears Neil ask. 

“Everything’s fine --”

“Shut up, John,” he hisses. He closes his eyes to whatever retort John might have to say back, but he’s met with nothing. Pure silence over the ringing in his ears. Somehow, that’s worse. 

He’s on a plane before he’s even realized what’s happened. It’s Mal sitting next to him and he suddenly wonders how the hell he got out of that limo, through security, and here. He can’t remember what terminal they’d flown out of. Hell, he doesn’t even remember showing anybody his passport. He’d just been in a car, in a room, now he was thousands of miles up in the sky. 

Mal gives him a gentle nudge, then shows him one of those mini scotch bottles that he’s just pulled out of his pocket. Paul glances down at it and sighs. He gives his head a little shake and doesn’t even have the time to morbidly ask for something a little stronger, before Mal shows him his other hand, with two small white pills in his palm. Paul knows it isn’t healthy; it isn’t how he’d been taught to sort things out, but he takes the pills anyway, and he’s just glad Mal never made him ask for them. 

He’s shaken awake and he has no clue how long he’s been out for. Figures start to come out of the blur of sleep. It’s still Mal next to him, but John’s here now too, crouched in the aisle with his elbows up on Mal’s arm rest. There’s a stranger standing next to him, bent at the waist, trying to get Paul’s attention. He’s in uniform; Paul realizes he’s one of the pilots. 

“We’ve received some word from Heathrow,” he tells him sullenly. Paul glances to John, who can’t seem to look him in the eye. “Mr. Brian Epstein is there waiting for you to land.” And that makes Paul sit up a little straighter. He feels Mal shift closer to him, their shoulders brushing and resting up against one another’s. “It seems there’s quite a crowd, so they’ll have a car for you on the tarmac.”

“What about our things?” Paul asks, his mouth still tasting of cotton. 

“I’ll stay back,” Mal assures him, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. He can’t imagine himself walking across the tarmac without Mal next to him. 

“Er,” the pilot stammers, trying to redirect them to more pressing issues. Paul looks back at him and the movement makes him feel nauseous. “Mr. Epstein says there may be some press waiting for you.” Paul swallows hard and he looks to John again, who  _ still _ can’t look at him. “He says you should say ‘no comment’. He said you’d know what that meant.”

Paul feels that same ringing in his ears start back up again. He feels it make him start to tremble. He clings to his arm rests and nods, just because he wants this stranger to leave him alone. The pilot nods, stands up straight, then glances down at John. “You should return to your seat, Mr. Lennon,” he says. “We’re over London.”

John keeps his eyes on Paul; he looks so earnest that Paul thinks he won’t move a muscle. Then, the pilot sets his hand on John’s shoulder and there’s nowhere else for him to go, so he stands. He returns to his seat next to Neil, but keeps his eyes over the aisle on Paul. London seems to pull them further and further downward and Paul suddenly wonders why the hell he ever wanted to come home. They’d been safe and secure on that bleeding island. Everything had been happy and easy. They could have lived in that place forever. 

Paul thinks he can hear the crowd even before they land, but he realizes that it must be in his own head. 

The flight crew are standing in front of them, ready to pull the great door open and Paul realizes he’s standing on the edge of something. It takes the breath out of him. 

“‘No comment’, Paulie,” John tells him, leaning close enough that Paul can feel his breath against the base of his neck, and Paul realizes that there was no hope of those words coming out of him. ‘No comment’; the thought alone made him sick. John reaches out for his hand and gives it a squeeze; it says:  _ you can do this _ . Paul squeezes back, but he means:  _ I’m sorry _ , and before John can understand that they’re saying two separate things to one another, the door opens and they’re met with shouts and flashbulbs. 

It’s a smaller crowd than the girls they’re used to, but it’s more pihrannic. Paul feels like they’re swallowed whole by it as they take the steps down towards the tarmac. He sees the car they’re meant to climb into just beyond all the reporters. Then, a door in the back opens and Brian climbs out. He stands up straight, looks set and determined, but he’s afraid. Paul can see it on his face. 

The reporters seem to come closer, encircling them like a stormcloud, before Paul realizes he’s even putting one foot in front of the other. He’s the one getting closer to him. There’s strength inside of him that he hadn’t even known was there. He was moving forward, getting closer to the people who wanted to tear him apart, when all he’d thought he’d wanted to do was lie down and cower behind John, behind Brian, behind anyone who might put themselves between him and men who hated him. 

He hears his own name over and over. There’s something angry in their voices, something entitled and harsh and Paul realizes that he can be the thing that stands between himself and the men who hate him. 

Then, there’s  _ that _ word: queer. He feels it hit him like something physical. It makes him stop dead in his tracks, which nobody had been expecting. A few more flashbulbs go off as the photographers and journalists skid to a stop with him. 

It even takes John a moment to realize he’s stopped. He ends up a few paces ahead, staring back at Paul through heads, cameras, and boom mics. 

Seemingly put on the spot, the closest journalist shoves a microphone in Paul’s face and can’t seem to come with anything better than: “Is it true? Is Paul McCartney a homosexual?”

Paul sees John give him a small shake of his head.  _ Lie, lie, lie, no comment _ \-- Paul can hear John’s voice in his head; Brian’s, too. But there’s his own as well and it’s telling him that John’s grown up denying the answer to this question. He’d denied it point-blank when it had been his turn to do this. He’d lived in that denial for so long, so  _ truly _ , that he hadn’t even been able to dig himself out of it when they were in bed with one another. Paul feels that blanket of shame between them again, and he realizes that if he says it now:  _ it isn’t true _ , that he’ll have to live as though that was a fact for the rest of his life. 

Paul opens his mouth to speak and he sees everything on John’s face: the fear, the anger, the  _ realization _ of what Paul’s about to do. He tries to take a step back towards Paul, but there’s too much between them, too many obstacles. It feels fitting. 

_ It isn’t true, it isn’t true, it isn’t true _ … So fucking what, if it was? They couldn’t throw him into a prison anymore. Why should he throw himself in another?

So, he thinks:  _ fuck it. Make of this what you will _ , and says: “Yes.” Over the journalist’s shoulder, John blanches. “Yes,” Paul says again, more to John than the cameras. “It’s true.”


	4. chapter four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty heavy chapter in a lot of ways tbh, pls pls heed the new tags. 
> 
> **TW: Past Child Abuse, Death of a Parent**
> 
> There’s a super candid discussion about Jim’s physical abuse of Paul growing up, here. I tried to keep the experience as specific as possible, because I do think that this character — this Paul — would forgive this Jim. This is BY NO MEANS a moment where forgiveness is required. The conversation takes place just as Paul and Jim go out into the back garden once Paul arrives back in Liverpool. This subject matter also goes hand-in-hand with Mary’s death. It’s a really tough and sensitive topic, obviously, so again, look out for yourselves, skip it, if needed!
> 
> Also, kind of fucked-up relationships to sex, on John’s part, here. We don’t really get super into it since we’re not in his POV, but just know that nothing he does in this chapter is healthy for him or anybody around him lmao 
> 
> Also, it's a heavy-Jane chapter!
> 
> This is the last chapter I had outlined from way back when, so the rest of it is a bit of a guessing game on my part haha so we shall see. The vague points I have are going in a slightly different direction than I think I'd originally intended, so I feel like I should warn you all, this feels like it will get worse before it gets better. But who's to say!
> 
> Not very many redeeming qualities here, I'm afraid, I'm so sorry lmao

The clatter and argument of the reporters follows them into the car. 

John climbs in first and he doesn’t even wait for Paul to crawl in after him before he says: “So, you’ve gone and done it now, haven’t you?” John hugs his jacket closer to his throat and shakes his head. 

Paul can feel John’s hands all over him, pulling him from the horde of reporters as soon as they’d learned the truth. He looks down at the way John’s hands stay in his lap, and he just wishes John would touch him again. He thinks he must be living in a world where that may never happen.

“What’s happened?” Brian asks, but he knows John’s too fuming to give him a proper answer, so he looks to Paul and says: “What did you say?”

He’d been so glad for the space between them, for the constant thrum of questions being asked, because he’d known, as soon as he’d admitted to the truth, that Brian hadn’t heard him. Maybe he could get away with it if Brian doesn’t hear. But  _ everybody  _ else did and they were voicing and re-voicing it until it was all Paul could hear. It frightened him, how they covered him with it. It frightens him so much that this one word --  _ queer _ \-- might be the only word they use for him that he wants to spin it on its head. He wants to be  _ proud  _ of it, so he means to say:  _ I told them the truth _ , but it feels feebly self-righteous, so he clamps his mouth shut. 

“He told them the book’s right,” John supplies for him and Brian blanches. “Bloody stupid,” John tacks on, and it’s quiet enough that Paul thinks it’s just meant for him to hear. He feels his cheeks start to go red. Again, he wishes he could be  _ proud _ , he wishes John could be too. 

“But I spoke with the pilot,” Brian says, grasping at straws. “Didn’t he tell you --”

“We got your message, Eppy,” John spits back. “Our Paul here just thought he had a better way.”

“This changes everything,” Brain mutters to himself and it sounds like such an understatement that it makes Paul feel sick. Brian itches for a telephone. The back of the car fills with this feeling of not having what you need. It’s heavy and stifling and Paul wishes he could just open the door and roll out. He settles for looking out the window and watching the tarmac turn into motorway. 

Then, silence reigns around them. Paul finds himself missing the rampant chaos of the reporters. He glances at John, who’s also now staring out of his window, his left knee bouncing incessantly, and Paul wants to reach out and touch him, to still it, but he realizes that John doesn’t  _ want _ him to touch him, now that people  _ know _ . 

“John,” Paul tries. He hears Brian sigh sadly and he realizes it’s because Brian’s been just here before: open and terrified and John not willing to meet him somewhere halfway. He tries to push that thought somewhere deep down. “John?” he says again, this time more forcefully. “I’m  _ sorry _ .”

John huffs out a laugh, but keeps his eyes out the window. Going for discretion, Brian kicks his foot out, toeing his boot along the side of John’s, imploring him to say  _ something _ , anything that Brian would have wanted him to say when they’d returned home from Spain. Paul doesn’t miss it. 

John actually softens, his eyes go down to his lap and he sighs. “I don’t know what you’d like me to say,” he says. Paul swallows hard and before he can answer, Brian says: “We’ll clear this up,” and he realizes that John hadn’t even been speaking to him. 

Feeling embarrassed, all that fear and shame turns to anger inside of him. He’s got nowhere to put it except back at John. 

“You won’t even speak to me?” Paul demands. John scoffs, but he keeps his eyes downward. “Just because I didn’t do what you asked?” It feels cheap, to bring up the things someone tells you in bed, but there’s anger inside of him and he wants to turn it into something. He doesn’t want to keep holding onto it. John just shakes his head. He must think it’s cheap, too. “They were looking at  _ me _ , John,” Paul hisses. “They were speaking to  _ me _ . It’s got nothing to do with you, so you can stuff the judgement, or whatever bloody neurosis this is --”

“You  _ said _ you wouldn’t,” John tells him and he sounds so small that Paul loses track of where they are. The might as well be back in bed with one another, blanketed and safe in darkness. Brian might as well not be sitting across from them. 

His anger starts to turn to guilt before he’s ready for it too. He realizes he’s made John this small, he’s always been the one to make John this small, and he hates himself for it, but he isn’t ready to feel sorry. He wants to let this anger protect him, like John taught him to. “Do you really think I’m so in love with you that I wouldn’t be able to keep your name out of it? That they would see it on my face?” For a moment, John flounders. Before he can say something smart, Paul cuts it off where it lies: “Because I’m not.” The words make him feel sick before he’s even said them. They crack in his throat. He keeps his eyes on John because he realizes he needs John to look at him and know that he’s lying. 

“I never thought you were in love with me,” John spits back, and it hurts because he means it. 

“Boys,” Brian warns. 

Paul realizes that he’d been waiting for John to add something, but there was nothing else coming. He’d been waiting for something cruel and insulting, but he realizes that John’s truth of it, that he thought Paul was capable of using him, of seeing him at his most vulnerable and not loving him for it, hurts more anyway. 

“John --” Paul manages, when John turns his head to look out the window. 

“Fuck off, Paul,” John says to the glass. “You’ve made your bed now.” And Paul’s left to wonder if he means with the press, or if he means with him. John would never let him back inside if he thought Paul didn’t love him. John would  _ never _ let him back inside. 

Paul sets his jaw, trying to offset the way his chin has started to tremble. He feels Brian’s eyes on him, so he looks out his window too, batting ungracefully at a tear before it can run too far down his cheek. Paul shakes his head at himself, tries to take a deep breath, but it shakes in his throat. His cheeks go red and hot; he hates to show people he’s crying. He’d long learned to keep that mess away from the people around him. 

He realizes that John allowing him close had tethered him to something after his mother had died. Meeting John had healed something. Thinking that closeness might be gone, put him back in his bedroom on Forthlin -- motherless, aimless, and directing all that anger and hopelessness inward. 

He closes his eyes and sees John underneath him: openly vulnerable, trusting and wanting. Paul had heard him say it:  _ I love you _ . He’d just said it so quietly, so peacefully, that Paul thought it hadn’t been meant for him. So, he’d let John keep it: private and precious. He realizes John had never heard him when he’d thought:  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ , or when he’d tried to make his kisses say the same thing back. John had just heard himself say it and be met with an undeniable silence. 

They pull up at Cavendish and Paul feels like he might be sick if he doesn’t get out of this car right now. He throws open the door and tries to pull himself to his feet. He sickly realizes that there aren’t any girls here waiting for him. He thinks if he was less exhausted, less afraid, he wouldn’t find that fact so funny. But it’s what he’s always wanted: some peace and quiet when he comes home. He’s gotten it, the same way he’s gotten to feel what it’s like to have John kiss him. He supposes he should be more careful with what he hopes for. 

He slams the car door shut and before he takes much more than a step towards his flat, he hears Brian rounding the car, telling him: “Paul, wait…”

He shuffles Paul in behind the gate, but then he stops, keeping his hands at Paul’s wrists. Paul sighs, realizing just how much he’d wanted one of his friends to touch him. The relief of it all, of not being alone, is enough for Paul’s eyes to gloss over. Brain catches it immediately and Paul feels him sending his heart out to him. 

“Oh,” he mutters sympathetically and then Paul feels one of Brian’s hands leave his wrist and find a place against his cheek. 

“I’m sorry,” he tries, turning into the touch, but it isn’t what he means, so he tries again, “I don’t know why I --” and none of it works: “I thought --...” 

“It’s alright,” Brian tells him, even though they both know it isn’t, he just hates to see a friend flounder. “We change our strategy, that’s all.”

“You’re angry with me,” Paul observes. Brian shakes his head, but Paul knows placation when he sees it, so he adds: “John’s angry, too,” as though that bears some additional, significant weight and, maybe, with the two of them, it always would. 

“No,” Brian tells him fiercely. “I’m not angry,” he says. Brian takes a deep breath, stands a little taller, and Paul watches him decide to be honest, for himself, and for John. “I’m just afraid.”

Paul nods quickly, gracious for the lifeline, grateful to have Brian out here with him, lost at sea, grasping at anything that looks like a lifeboat. Brian pulls him against his chest and Paul eagerly accepts it, feeling warmed and weighted down in the English springtime. He feels an extra set of eyes on him and knows it must be John, but he doesn’t have it in him to feel sorry for him. There just isn’t enough room. 

“I have to get to the office,” Brian says into his hair. It’s the nice way of saying that he needs to clean up Paul’s mess and Paul gobbles up the kindness of it. He pulls away, still nodding. He sniffles once, wiping at his glossy eyes with the back of his palm, before he realizes that Brian looks sorry for something. Before Paul can ask what it is, Brian adds: “Though, I feel I should warn you.”

“What?”

“Jane’s home,” he says, and Paul feels all the air around him turn to concrete. He stares back at Brian, dumb-founded, and feels the itch to climb right back into that car, even though he knows full-well, that’s where John is. He could stay out in his front garden, forever, guarded by doors between him and the two people he’s fallen in love with. Brian sees him go skittish like a cat, so he feebly rambles: “I’m sorry, the news was breaking, and I couldn’t reach you in Greece. I thought she should hear it from one of us, before she saw it on the television.” And Paul knows he’s right. He  _ knows _ it, but that doesn’t make him feel any less sick. “She wants to help you, Paul,” Brian tells him, and it’s the utter opposite of what he’d been expecting to hear, so he feels some of that concrete turn back into oxygen. 

“Help me?”

Brian gives him a pointed look and Paul hears his own voice in his head:  _ she’d have married you today, you git _ . It hits him like a suckerpunch. 

“Things may be different now,” Brain says carefully. “That we’ve admitted to the rumour’s validity. But I think she’d still like to help. In any way she can.”

Paul nods, means to say something, but before he can, he hears Cavendish’s front door click open. Both he and Brian turn towards it, as Jane comes out onto the front steps. She looks directly at Paul and Paul realizes that he can see everything: her resilience, her adamance, her empathy, and he’s  _ so glad _ for it. He’s too exhausted to be forced to pull any of that out from behind her armour. She’s laid bare and Paul realizes just how much he likes that. 

\--

There’s a cup of tea in his hands that has long gone cold by the time Paul feels like he can shut his mouth. He tells her about his phone call with Robert Fraser, he tells her about the kiss with Brian on George’s wedding day, he tells her about Elvis and Long John Baldry and the lads back at the Liverpool Playhouse. He tells her that his name in the book must have been a guess, but it didn’t make it any less true. He’d never been with any of the men he’d fancied, he’d never touched them, never kissed them. It was only Brian, but it was still  _ true _ . 

One name hangs heavy over them, but Paul can’t breathe any life into it. He supposes he should probably tell her everything. About the morning he’d woken up with John nestled against him in Rishikesh, their nights together on Lesbos, but he can’t. It still feels too precious a thing, too precocious, poised to fall and shatter at any moment, and Paul doesn’t want to be the one to push it over the edge. That would be John’s job; and he’d do fine work of it, too. 

The room goes still; Paul supposes Jane deserves some time to process everything he’s said. She’d come home for him, she’d have done anything for him. She deserves a bit of time, even though the silent moments steal the air from his lungs. 

She doesn’t say:  _ And what about John? Is it John you’ve wanted this whole time? _ She doesn’t even say:  _ How could you have known all this time and have never told me? _ Paul holds his breath, realizing the only option left beyond that is insulting. She could call him a queer, she could ask him to leave, and he  _ would _ . He’d deserve that, just like she’d deserved time to think. 

Her eyes go from something hard and meticulous to something soft, but Paul can’t pinpoint it before she asks him: “Is this how you’d like to tell me?” Paul swallows hard, frowns his confusion at her. She sighs sadly and repeats what he has to assume are his own words back to him: “‘The book’s right’.” He means to tell her that he doesn’t understand, but she sets her tea down on the table in front of them and inches forward so she can take one of his hands in hers. She runs her fingers over the back of his palm. He thinks she looks fond and forlorn, like she knows this might be the last time she touches him like this. “I don’t care what the book says,” she tells him, keeping her eyes down on their hands in front of her. “Forget the book, forget the press,” she says fiercely. “This is a  _ moment _ for you.” She looks up at him and Paul realizes that she’s crying. He wonders when that might have started. It makes him choke on something, and he realizes that he’s been crying too. “Don’t you want it to be one where you’re proud?”

Something bubbles up inside of him: some emotionally deadly combination of relief, gratitude, and shame. When it works its way out of his throat as a strangled sob, only the shame wrestles its way through his teeth. “ _ How _ ?” he asks, and she must see that it’s shame that’s comes out to meet her, even though she was so close to the others, because she looks  _ so sad _ about it. She shakes her head as though she’s disappointed, as though it would be so  _ bloody easy _ to be queer and  _ happy about it _ . “How am I meant to be proud of this?”

“Because it’s  _ who you are _ \--” she tries. 

Paul shakes his head at her and something venomous comes out when he says: “This isn’t who I am,” and he realizes that it’s the opposite of what John had told him when he’d confessed to being queer himself. But Paul doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want it to be who he is, he doesn’t even want it to be a part of him. “It isn’t,” he insists, before he realizes that Jane hasn’t said anything. Going red, he runs with it, because John had been right in the car from the airport: it’s easier to be angry than it is to be afraid. “It isn’t everything. I was a whole person before anybody found out and I’m a whole person now.”

He sets his head in his hands and he doesn’t know why, but he thinks of himself in 1963: brimming with musicality, wit, and kindness, and how they’d boiled him down to  _ the cute one _ . He’d wanted to be, and  _ was _ , so much more than they ever let him be: baby-faced, the girl of the group. He wrote half of their songs, screamed out all their rockers, but he’d never been called more. He wonders what they’ll call him now, and how many years he’ll live in that label. He suddenly understands why John had never wanted people to know. He’d understood the years he’d have to live being called something he didn’t like, he understood that it was easier to be yourself behind closed and locked doors.

“I  _ know _ that,” she implores. “That isn’t what I mean --”

“I’m so fucked,” he mutters. Jane leans forward, unsure if she’d caught him correctly. She squeezes his hands tighter. “Christ, I’m so fucked…”

“You’re not,” she tries, but it just makes him angry. He pulls his hand away from her and starts to stand. “Paul --” she tries, but he can hardly hear her. He tries to take a deep breath, but he realizes that it only fills his lungs up halfway; his next heaving breath only fills them up halfway of  _ that _ . With every breath, he’s getting less and less air. He tries to find a place where he can go and strangle himself alone, but he suddenly can’t even remember the layout of his own home. 

There are hands all over him, grabbing at his wrists, delicately running through his hair, easing him down onto the cool tiled floor, then, for a moment, there’s nothing. It’s just him in an empty room and he finally realizes that he’s in his kitchen and that his hyperventilating has slowed to a point where he can actually think straight. He’s about to wish that John had just bloody come inside with him when he hears Martha’s claws on the hardwood floor, excitedly running to come find him. He hears Jane cooing at her, encouraging her through the house, until they’re all together again.

Martha lays overwhelmed kisses to his cheeks and under his chin. She’s too big for it and can’t read the room, but she tries to climb into his lap anyway. Her vigorous wagging throws her off-balance and she lands in a heap across his legs and it makes him laugh. It makes Jane laugh too, and they both realize that they’d wondered when the next time Paul might laugh would be. He hadn’t felt like he had it in him. 

Jane sits down next to him, close enough that their shoulders are brushing up against one another. 

“I kept her upstairs until we’d had a moment to talk,” she tells him. “I didn’t know how this would go,” she confesses. “I hate when she sees us fighting.”

Paul nods, then he buries his nose into the fur at Martha’s neck. When he closes his eyes, he can imagine himself up at the farm in Scotland. He wonders what running away a second time might look like, and what might be awaiting him on his return. 

“I don’t want to fight with you, Paul,” Jane whispers, bringing Paul back to Cavendish. She sets her forehead down on his shoulder and takes a deep breath. 

“I don’t want to fight with you, either,” he agrees. Then: “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

“I still love you,” she asserts, and leaves the  _ despite… _ hanging. Though, Paul realizes it’s got nothing to do with the broken news. She means:  _ despite not wanting to marry you _ .  _ Despite realizing how different we really are _ .  _ Despite wanting different things _ .  _ Despite being so, so angry with you. _ He suddenly remembers how they’d left things in Rishikesh. Engagement rings still on their fingers, but Jane had told him that they’d be separated by the time he got back to London. 

“Yeah,” Paul manages, because he can’t actually believe how much he still loves her too. 

“I’d have married you to hide this,” she says. Paul watches her lift her forehead off his shoulder. She shakes her head at herself. “That’s all I thought when Brian told me.” She reaches out and pats at Martha’s fur. Paul realizes she wants to touch him, but isn’t sure she’s allowed. “I never thought you’d…”

“I’m sorry,” Paul says, because he feels like he has to, but she shakes her hand at him fiercely, then her hand leaves Martha and she sets it on his arm determinedly. So, he wires his mouth shut. 

“I’m sorry, but I  _ never _ thought you’d be so brave,” she says, and it’s the last word he’d thought she might use.  _ Stupid, decietful _ , those would have worked too. But  _ brave… _ The word takes his breath away. “It’s  _ courageous _ that you’ve told me. That you’ve told  _ them _ .” She nods reassuringly because Paul realizes he must look lost in the kindness of it. “Because you  _ know _ people will hate you for it.” He swallows hard, but nods with her. “But there might be some people who stay alive because of it, too.” He exhales sharply. The responsibility of it hits him hard. 

He remembers learning that Long John Baldry was a queer, Pete Townshend and Dave Davies, too. Even though they’d just come out to the inner rock circle, not the papers, it had chipped away at something inside of Paul. Some piece of armour had gone thinner when he’d realised that there were men like him around him. That armour had fallen away completely when it had been John. He suddenly wonders what it might have been like to be fifteen, watching a man like him on the television. Would he have grown up able to stomach the word ‘queer’ being used to describe him? Would he have written a song about a man he never got to kiss? Would he have just rested easier, feeling seen and loved, because there was a man like him still on every television in every living room around the world? He thinks he might have. He thinks John might have too.

“I don’t want to marry you, Paul,” Jane tells him and it feels like it should be adding insult to injury, but she says it so blazonedly that Paul can’t help but be compelled to listen. “That would be too easy. I think you’re scared, but I also think you  _ want _ people to see you.” He nods at the way she’s able to put words to this raging thing inside of him. “And they’ll look at you and see all the things you’ve shown me: they’ll see your kindness, your creativity, your life. And I think you have the strength to bear all those eyes on you.” She pauses, looks at him pointedly. “For the ones that don’t.” Again, John’s name passes silently between them. 

Paul nods, thinks of John at that fete in Woolton.  _ You were first _ . Sixteen, and in love with the boy who could tune his guitar for him. Never breathing a word of life into this fire inside of him, tearing it down to its coals, so low, that he could pretend it wasn’t there. Paul thinks of every time that John told him that he loved him and he wonders if it ever made John cry. To say  _ I love you _ and not mean it the way you want to. To have Paul say  _ I love you, too _ , but not mean it the way John needs, the way his mother hadn’t meant it the way John needed, or Uncle George, or Stuart. They’d all said it, but it had never meant:  _ I’ll never leave you _ . 

“And what if I don’t?” Paul asks. 

“Then you have the people who love you,” she assures him, and he feels her love as a substitute for strength viscerally. George and Rich’s love, too. Brian’s, holed away in his office, fixing this, protecting him. They’d all do the same. 

He must have ‘ _ I want you to kiss me _ ’ written all over him, because she cups his cheek and presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. She’s the sweetest person he’s ever kissed and he thinks he’ll remember this one forever. 

They end up in bed with one another, so close that Paul isn’t sure who’s holding who. 

\--

He reads about himself in the newspaper over coffee the following morning, which isn’t surprising. Jane’s still in one of his old shirts when she leans over him to read the story over his shoulder. It isn’t flattering, neither of them pretend it is. Though, there’s no mention of John, which Paul is glad for. He thinks it might settle something in John’s chest and Paul isn’t so lucky to have settled. There’s chatter out beyond his gate, they can hear it through the opened window. And it isn’t the voices of girls fawning over him. 

He wishes he’d called George and Rich, to warn them. He imagines there must be reporters hoping to get their opinions on this as well. 

He imagines Rich staring down at the same newspaper and he wonders how much this will change. The same newspaper in Kinfauns, too, and Montagu Square. For a moment, it almost makes him smile, that he can be mirroring so many of his friends in this moment, hunched over a newspaper, but it suddenly strikes him: the same newspaper in Kinfauns, Kenwood, Montagu Square didn’t end there. It didn’t even just end in London. 

“Oh, my God,” he mutters. He starts to stand, so Jane takes a step backward, allowing him to do so. 

“What?” He goes to the telephone, ignores Jane the first time she says: “Paul?” Then, she says, “what is it?” and it makes it come pouring out. 

Chewing at his thumbnail as the phone begins to ring, he says: “My father will have read this paper.”

She seems to wince at that, which stands in stark contrast to what she says to him, which is: “Jim will be fine.” Paul shakes his head at her. 

The phone rings through, so Paul kills the line and dials again. This time, someone answers on the first ring, except the line is still. “Mikey?” Paul tries. 

There’s an exasperated sigh on the other side, which Paul immediately recognizes as his brother. “Fucking hell, Paul.” A few other expletives leave his brother’s mouth, but he sounds so relieved to be hearing from him. 

“Why didn’t you answer when I first rang you?” Paul asks, clutching to the telephone, already knowing the reason. 

“Because I’ve been screening my calls, haven’t I?” Mike answers, and Paul suddenly wonders if this is how it felt to be a younger brother. “They’ve found our number, won’t stop calling about you --”

“You’ve heard then?” Paul asks, and Mike must hear how small he’s gone, because he sighs again, and goes a bit soft. 

“Yeah,” he tells him. “It’s in the paper up here, too.”

There’s a pause and Paul realizes that Mike’s going to make him ask. “Has Da’ seen it?”

“He’s seen it, mate,” Mike offers, but what he really means to say is:  _ I’m sorry. _

“Is he mad at me?” Paul asks and they both understand the implications of that. Paul can’t quite believe how old he actually is. He feels fourteen all over again. 

“I dunno,” Mike says apologetically. “We didn’t really talk for long.”

“Fuck,” Paul mutters, dropping his head in his hands. He can feel himself starting to shake, because he knows what he ought to do, he just doesn’t want to. “Should I go see him?”

The ‘yes’ hangs heavy over them. The ‘you should go and have your arse handed back to you’ hangs heavier. Mike sighs, hoping to bear all of it, then says: “I reckon I would.”

\--

“You’ll be alright?” Jane asks, following Paul into the garage. She crosses her arms over her chest, clutching one of her old dressing gowns tighter against her body, watching Paul chuck his travel bag into the boot of his car. Paul shuts the boot a little too roughly, so she reaches out and touches the back of his hand gently. “Paul,” she says softly and it’s the kindness of it that makes him stop. 

He sets his hands down on the smooth paint of his car and hunches his shoulders forward. 

When they’re quiet like this together, he can hear the crowd outside quite clearly. It’s gotten a bit smaller since they woke up; he imagines he’ll cause quite a stir while he tries to roll past them in a car that isn’t so inconspicuous. 

He tries to ignore that thought, he tries to ignore the sound of the press entirely. Instead, he looks up at her and smiles something weak and awful. She sees right through it because she doesn’t smile back. “Yes,” he tells her. “I’ll be fine.”

“It’s a long drive,” she warns. 

He nods, slips past her and pulls open the driver’s side door. “I know how far it is,” he tells her. “I grew up there, you remember?” Jane sighs pointedly. Paul supposes she has every right to. She’s the only one on his side right now. He sighs, drops his hand from the door handle and just lets it dangle down at his side. “I think I need the time to think, anyway.”

“They might follow you,” she adds.

“I drive fast.”

“That  _ isn’t _ heartening --”

“ _ Jane _ ,” he intones, and she looks away from him. “I don’t know how else to tell you: I  _ need _ to go home.”

“You could just call him,” she pokes back. “He could come here --”

“ _ No _ !” His voice bounces off the concrete walls and comes back to him; it makes him feel ashamed of himself. It makes him feel like he’s growing up and becoming his father’s son. “No,” he says again, this time more softly, with more control. “He wouldn’t come if I asked.”

“You don’t know that,” she says. She steps towards him and takes both his hands in hers. She traces soft lines along his thumb and fingers.

“I don’t want him to come here,” he finally decides to tell her. He looks out through the small circular window of the garage, across his front garden, at the closed gate. “I don’t want him to see all this.”

“I don’t think you should be travelling alone,” she decides. “Why don’t we call John?” And Christ, he can’t imagine anything worse than four hours trapped in a car with John Lennon. 

“ _ No _ \--”

“Richard, then.” He only shakes his head at her, letting his eyes fall shut. He feels her squeeze his hands more dearly. “Alright. Me.” He sighs, opens his mouth to tell her to leave it, but she squeezes his hands again. “I’m coming with you,” she repeats. Then, she lets him go, and he realizes how much he hadn’t wanted her to. “Let me get dressed. Please don’t leave.”

He nods, but that must not be good enough, because she’s only slowly backed away from him; she won’t leave the room entirely until he finally says: “I won’t.” 

She looks beautiful when she returns; she always does. She doesn’t bring much; she hasn’t got much to bring. She’d meant it when she’d told him they would be separated by the time he came home from India. It suddenly really strikes him: that she’s here at all, that she’s next to him in the car up north, that she’s told him that she still loves him.  _ How? _ he thinks, stealing a glance at her in the passenger seat. 

“Thank you for coming with me,” he tells her, somewhere outside of Northampton. She turns to look at him, her red hair cascading down her shoulder. She smiles reassuringly. “You were right, you know. I didn’t want to do this alone.”

She puts her hand on top of his on the gear stick, then she lets it wander down towards his knee. She gives it a sweet squeeze then folds her hands onto her lap. “He’ll be alright, Paul,” she tells him, and she means Jim. He reckons she’s probably right: he and his father had had their harder moments, but they’d built a home and raised a family with one another. Something held them together: through Mary, through John doing his best to tear them apart, through fame and money and The Beatles. This might just be another thing they hold each other through. Or, he supposes, swallowing hard, this could be the end of the line. A disappointment without a bright side. He hadn’t become a teacher because he’d wanted to play music for a living. He’d played rock and roll and it had brought them all anything they could ever want. Being queer… That wouldn’t bring his father anything. No joy, no comfort.

“Yeah,” Paul manages. “I’m sure he will.”

“He loves you,” she assures him, because he must sound like he needs it. 

He blinks away a few tears, because for the first time he can remember, he has to wonder:  _ how much? _ He laughs, because he’s a Northern boy and there isn’t anything else to do. “Christ, Jane,” he tells her. “Not while I’m driving. You wanna kill us both?”

She laughs back, but her heart isn’t in it. She scoots forward in her seat and wraps her arms around his bicep, holding herself close. “I’m sorry,” she says into his sleeve, but Paul can hear the way she’s smiling through it. She lays her head on his shoulder and heaves a great sigh. Staring through the windshield, they both see the rain that’s headed their way. 

\--

They’re on the wrong side of the Mersey. It’s all wrong. Paul looks up at his father’s house, the one he’s lived in for years, and he wishes it was Forthlin Road. There was just something in the cushions, something in the blankets that felt like home. The walls knew him there. These ones don’t. He takes a deep breath and it shakes somewhere in his throat. Jane reaches out for his hand and they stare at the front door, as though it might magically open and give them all the answers. 

She doesn’t let go of his hand as they make their way up to the door, as they wait for Jim to answer after they’ve rung the bell. Paul hears some movement on the other side and he realizes he never could have done this on his own. The urge to run and hide is so strong, but Jane’s firm grip on his hand roots him in place. 

The door swings open. Paul holds his breath, prepares for some harsh words or a smack, but nothing comes. They stand there, Paul thinks his Dad must be sizing him up, deciding whether or not to even let him inside. Jim glances to Jane and he looks so gracious that Paul suddenly sees himself in his father. 

“You’ve brought him home,” he hears his father say to Jane and he thinks it must open something up inside of him. He takes a shaky breath and it brings his father’s eyes back on him. “Stronger together, I say,” Jim adds, stepping towards Paul and placing his hands on both shoulders. It’s such a father’s touch that it makes everything go right. Paul starts to smile, even before Jim adds on: “Must be the Irish blood in us.”

Jim pulls Paul into his chest and it feels so good that Paul wonders why they never did this when his mother had died. “I thought you’d be cross with me,” Paul mutters into his father’s breast pocket. He hears Jane laugh, then feels her reassuring hand rub small circles between his shoulder blades. 

“What good would that do?” Jim answers. 

And Paul supposes it wouldn’t do any good at all. He supposes that’s the sort of people he’s surrounded himself with: the sort that wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t bring good into the world. He silently chides himself for being so afraid. He imagines a life here, the same way he’d imagined the solitary one in Lesbos and Scotland. Except this one is full; there’s his father’s showtunes playing on a record player somewhere, there’s Jane’s red hair and her delicate hands showing him it’s alright, there’s his friends’ silent, but unwavering support. All that’s missing is John. John’s lost in that other world somewhere -- the quiet one on an island, and Paul wishes he’d just make the jump. 

Jim fixes them up some whiskey in their tea and they take out into the back garden. Jane hangs back with Angela and Ruth; Paul watches her on the floor of the sitting room, playing with some of Ruth’s dolls, while the tea steeps. She glances up, catches him looking, then holds up the doll and shrugs helplessly, like she hasn’t got a clue about how to play with them properly, and she  _ doesn’t _ , not really. Not yet, anyway. 

She isn’t ready for kids, doesn’t want them if it means giving up large parts of herself. That had been one of the wedges in Rishikesh, the perpetual disagreement that had plagued them ever since they started seeing one another. Paul supposes his habits of infidelity had been a bit more crucial to their breakdown.

Jim pushes a steaming mug into his hands and beckons him outside. Paul’s glad for the hot drink as they sit themselves down on the patio furniture. Winter is long gone, but nobody’s told the coastal winds. His father heaves a great sigh and Paul knows they’ve come out here alone to talk about this new thing between them seriously. He isn’t quite sure how he feels about that yet. He realizes his father wants him to start the conversation, but he’s at a loss. 

“Dad, I’m sorry,” Paul says, just because his throat is itching to fill the silence up with something. Jim sighs again and Paul wonders if he’s said the wrong thing. “I never meant for my private life to…” He shakes his head at himself, because he realizes he really means to say:  _ I’m sorry for disgusting you _ . 

“It’s  _ them _ stirring it all up,” Jim says, offering a shrug, but Paul realizes he won’t look at him. 

Paul realizes that they don’t know how to speak with one another. With this thing between them, neither of them know what to say. “Has everything changed?” Paul blurts out. Jim turns to look at him. Paul had hoped he’d see some sort of fierce determination in his eyes, but his father’s just gone stoic. Paul supposes he’s been hiding things from his father all his life, it was only fair for Jim to hide from him now, too. “Am I too different?”

That must strike something, because Paul watches his father go soft. He leans forward in his seat and his eyes have gone dark and intense. “Too different to what?” Jim asks. 

Paul shrugs helplessly. He sets his tea down on the table because he realizes his hands are shaking. “To  _ speak _ to me,” he says pathetically. “To love me like you did yesterday.”

“I haven’t changed the way I love you,” he says, and he almost sounds angry about it. Paul suddenly sees the years between them: when he was fourteen, if he heard anger in his father’s voice, he’d assumed it was directed at him. Now, he sees his father’s anger for what it is: directed at the world around them, at the things that make it hard to say what you mean. “I’m  _ proud _ of you.” Paul feels himself choke on something. “Same as I was yesterday.” He looks down at his lap and wishes he could take some of that pride from his father and wear it himself. “I’ve put you through hell.” 

Paul looks up at that, his brown knit in confusion. “You haven’t --”

“When your mother --” Jim starts. They both clamp their mouths shut. Maybe nothing really had changed. “When we lost your mother,” he starts again, and Paul can’t believe it. He can’t believe that he’s decided to press on. This isn’t what they do. Mary hangs heavy over the both of them, they never say why. The uncharted territory makes Paul start to tremble. “You built yourself into something new.” 

Paul swallows hard, but it doesn’t shake the lump in his throat. He thinks if his father says another word, he’ll lose it. He can’t remember the last time he cried about his mother. (With John. In Florida.) He remembers standing in front of the mirror in the wash closet, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks blotchy and thinking:  _ stop, stop, stop.  _ And he hadn’t just meant:  _ stop crying _ , he’d meant:  _ stop being sensitive, stop being at a loss, stop loving someone like your life depends on it. _

“I could still see you,” Jim says, his voice strangled around the emotion of it. “ _ My son _ . But there were things you buried, too.”

Paul shakes his head. “I just wanted her to see that I was alright.”

“But you weren’t,” Jim insists. 

And Paul doesn’t know what to say. He thinks that the truth and honesty have felt good on his lips lately, so he says: “No,” even though it makes him cry. 

“I needed you to look after your brother,” Jim admits, then he shakes his head at himself ruefully. “I needed you to look after me. And that wasn’t fair. You were just a boy, and I  _ needed _ you to be good and to be strong because I didn’t think I was either of those things.”

“You were having a hard time --” Paul tries.

“It’s  _ wrong _ that I shouted at you when you weren’t being what I thought you could be,” he says, then he adds: “that I  _ hit _ you.” And Paul realizes that for Jim, there would always be a version of himself that he hates more than he could ever hate Paul for loving and kissing other men. 

“We’re past that,” Paul says, which he knows to be true, but he can still feel welts on his arms and the backs of his legs if he concentrates hard enough, and Jim must know it. That must be what’s so wrong about it. 

“I never told you I regretted it,” Jim says and Paul realizes that neither of them were ever really past anything. But he feels them climbing over something treacherous right now. “Or, that I was sorry,” then he corrects himself: “Or, that you don’t ever need to forgive me if you don’t want to.”

“I do,” Paul assures him, though he supposes he never really had until he’d been given the option not to. 

“You were afraid of me --”

“Dad,” Paul tries. “I  _ always _ loved you --” But his father holds a hand up to him. 

“You were afraid of me,” he repeats. “And that made you afraid of everything. You hid the things you thought might make people angry. Like who you love.” A sob wrestles its way out of Paul’s throat and he realizes his Dad must be right. He wonders who he might be if his mother had stayed alive. If he’d stayed sensitive. It hurts that his father’s traced it all back, that he’s given all this shame and hiding a birthplace and it had all come from a place where he’d supposed to feel safe. “When we lost her,  _ that’s _ the hell I put you through.” Paul realizes he doesn’t have the strength to disagree with him anymore. He nods, and watches that bitterness, that exhaustion hit his father, and he’s glad for it for only a moment, before he realizes that it’s over. 

That bitterness had lived inside of him for so long, he can’t believe how quickly he’d gone so light as soon as he let it out. He sees himself again, fourteen and in front of the mirror in the bathroom on Forthlin, saying:  _ stop, stop, stop _ , and he realizes that somewhere, his mother had been saying the same thing. 

“What would she think of me?” Paul asks, and they both hear how young he’s gone. Jim sighs sadly, so sympathetically, because he  _ knows _ that question has been hanging over the both of them since Paul was fourteen years old. The years of missed reassurances, of missed catharsis, they sit like a stone between them now, but neither of them are willing to let it rest there. Jim reaches out and takes Paul’s hands in his; it’s so foreign a sensation that it almost makes Paul pull away. But he thinks: that’s what he would have done before honesty, before pride. He wants to see the version of himself allowed to exist after it. 

“Look at everything you’ve done,” Jim tells him. “Everything you’ve done for your family. For yourself. Look at your life. You built it with everything that she put inside of you: love.” Paul nods, taken aback by how much he’s needed to hear that his mother loved him. “Kindness. Joy.” Jim shakes his head at him. “What would she  _ think of you _ ? Paul...”

The answer is obvious, but Paul gives him more truth. In this moment, he thinks he must understand John completely. “I think I just need to hear it.”

“She would be just as proud of you as I am,” he answers. “More. Because she always had more inside of her.”

Paul nods, chewing a hole through his cheek. He means to say, thank you, but it isn’t enough, because Jim stands and Paul does too, to meet him, before he can think too much about it. Jim just holds him close, like he was seven years old again, and Paul just lets him. He’s missed this boy. He thinks he must deserve a moment to cling onto somebody he loves. 

Eventually, they sit back down, they finish their tea, and Paul realizes that the phrases:  _ I’ve never felt this way before _ and  _ I feel more like myself than I ever have _ can co-exist with one another. Then, it’s Jane next to him at garden furniture, not Jim, and Paul’s left wondering how long he’s been out here. She’s holding his hand and he realizes how tired he is, how quickly the years have caught up to him. 

She takes him to bed even though it’s only three in the afternoon and she lays next to him in the grey afternoon light. They cling onto one another on the twin bed in the guest room like they’re kids again, and she plays with his hair until he closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again. 

The room’s dark around them when Paul opens his eyes. It’s Jane, still next to him, though she’s fast asleep. Gingerly, he rolls onto his side, careful not to rouse her, and glances at the clock on the wall. It’s nearly eleven. He does the math in his head: eight hours of sleep. He feels stronger for it. 

He swings his feet over the side of the bed. Looking over his shoulder, he watches Jane nestle deeper against the pillow. He smiles down at her; he likes the love that he still has for her. He realizes he’d lost her. If it wasn’t for the bleeding book, he never would have seen her again, and he can’t believe he’d allowed that to happen. He knows that there will be another man to love her and kiss her and marry her, but he’s glad that they’ve salvaged something between them. 

The house is dead quiet as he makes his way downstairs. It feels calm in the darkness. Golden light from the streetlamps outside cast shadows across the sitting room. He switches on the television, keeps the volume down low. Then, he heads into the kitchen to find some food. He hopes Jane had something to eat before she’d fallen asleep next to him, though something tells him that she’d never left his side. 

There’s a plate set aside for him in the fridge. With the light from the refrigerator spilling out across the kitchen, he catches a note waiting for him by the telephone. His name is scrawled across the top in his father’s handwriting. Then:  _ John called for you _ . And a number to call back. It’s the number of his new flat downtown, rather than Kenwood. Paul knows the number well-enough by heart. 

He holds still; reads that message over and over:  _ John called for you. _ He looks from the note, to the telephone, and back. He imagines John on the line with his father and it’s enough to make him chuckle. He lifts the telephone, because he supposes someone in London ought to know he’s alright. Not for the first time, he wishes he’d given George or Rings a call. 

He dials John up and doesn’t have too long to wonder if John had just called to shout at him before John answers. “Yeah, hullo,” he says, sounding slightly sleepy. Paul smiles before he means to. 

“It’s me,” Paul says and he wonders when he had to stop referring to himself by name. 

John goes still. There’s a moment where Paul thinks he might hang up on him. “You are in Liverpool, then.”

“I am, aye,” Paul answers. “How’d you know where I went?”

“Mike called me,” John tells him. Then, he takes a deep breath and muses: “I don’t know how you can do it,” and Paul feels sorry for him, that there isn’t a place here that feels like coming home. “It’d be the last place I’d want to go.”

“I felt like I had to explain it to my Dad,” Paul admits. 

John sighs heavily. “How’d he take it?”

“Quite well, actually,” he allows. John hums something in response and Paul can’t read it. He imagines it’s something jealous. “Well, you spoke to him, didn’t you?” Paul asks. John laughs. “He didn’t seem angry, did he?”

“No, I suppose he didn’t,” John says and Paul realizes it’s all gone stiff between them. Except, it isn’t a stone to climb over, it’s a bottomless chasm that could never be filled with the right words. He realizes that the closest he’ll come are those three words he should have said back to John in bed in Greece. 

“John?” he starts. John seems to hold his breath. “I --” Then, there’s a voice somewhere deeper in whatever room John is in. It’s a voice Paul recognizes; it’s Brian.  _ Who’s on the phone? _ Paul bites his tongue; if John was speaking he would too. He goes still and quiet like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. With the truth open between them now, it means something that Brian is over at John’s flat, at -- Paul glances at the clock again -- at eleven at night. 

Paul wonders if Brian says:  _ I love you too _ when John says it first. He wonders if John says it at all. Either way, it’s Brian he’s with tonight. 

Instead of continuing on the way he’d like to, Paul says: “I’ve called too late.” And he means it literally, but it might mean something else, too.

“Paul --”

“I should let you go,” he adds, and John doesn’t say anything back. For a long time, he doesn’t say anything back, then a short: “Fine,” reaches him and the line goes dead. 

Slowly, he sets the phone back on its hook, and there’s a voice in his head telling him:  _ you should have said it, anyway _ , and he isn’t sure if it’s his or if it’s John’s. 

He sits down on the couch in the sitting room, his dinner forgotten, and the volume still down low on the television. It doesn’t matter; he doesn’t notice the rumbling of his stomach, or the fact that he can hardly hear the people on screen over his own breathing, because he wouldn’t be able to drown out the voice in his head anyway:  _ you should have said it, anyway. Why didn’t you say it, anyway?  _ He thinks the walls must be closing in around him. He thinks it must be harder to breathe than it had been ten minutes ago. 

He goes outside, to get some fresh air in his lungs. He toys his thumb across his car keys in his pockets and doesn’t even remember grabbing them and bringing them out with him. Standing on the front steps, sucking on a cigarette, he stares out at his car on the drive. When had he ever become so prone to running away. He itches for his tires to chew some gravel. He itches for wind through an opened window on the streets he grew up on. But running away has done nothing but hurt him. 

“Paul?” It’s Jane behind him. He hadn’t even heard her open the door. He feels caught in something. He must look as sick as he feels because she steps out next to him and rubs circles into his back. 

“I needed a smoke,” he says, going for casual and apathetic, but his voice betrays him. It cracks somewhere in the middle and Jane clicks her tongue; she’s caught it and she doesn’t know what to do about it. So, she presses a kiss to his shoulder and he wonders when people touching him will stop making him fall apart. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, because he’s cried in front of her more today than he ever has in all the years he’s known her. 

“It’s alright,” she soothes. She takes a deep breath, then asks: “What’s happened?”

“John hates me,” he says, because it hurts less than saying:  _ John thinks I don’t love him. _

“He  _ doesn’t _ ,” she assures him. 

He shakes his head and says to her: “I haven’t told you everything.”

She pulls away, looks up at him with wide eyes. She swallows hard, then nods. Beckoning him to go on. 

She must be able to guess, but he tells her about John: about Paris, and Florida, and Paris, again. The hot American South, where John had been so afraid, and India too, behind her back, after she’d gone. And finally, he tells her about Lesbos. He tells her that John had been the moon and he’s been the wave and how he was afraid he’d never stopped being one. 

He wonders where the fine line might be, where she’ll leave him forever. But she doesn’t; she stays with him while he drowns himself. 


	5. chapter five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty, so, as you may have noticed if you’ve been following this story consistently, this is a bit of a revision of the previous two chapters. Except that by 'revision', I mean 'complete re-write' because this goes a totally different direction lmao
> 
> Basically, I wrote myself into a corner with an ending that really stopped making sense, but I was forcing it to anyway. So, I threw caution to the wind and let this go where it actually wanted to. Forcing myself towards a specific ending really made me lose sight of the AU-ness I started this story off with. It started with Brian surviving and with John and Cyn divorcing amicably. I did that for a reason and then promptly forgot about it entirely lol. So, here’s the version of John I realize I actually wanted all along. 
> 
> Same goes for Jane. Like… I spent a whole chapter writing her into this really great, supportive character and then immediately tossed her and made Paul do all this stupid shit alone. None of that anymore, we’re gonna be hopeful and loving and together in 2021!
> 
> This honestly might get really long. I’m gonna keep the 12 chapter estimate, but I won’t be surprised if it goes a bit longer than that now. I only have until about chapter 8 fully outlined, but be aware, I’m gonna do something really self-indulgent with this version of John, which frankly, will totally be OOC, but will hopefully feel in-character for this story’s version of him. So, buckle up, we’re gonna ignore history entirely and just hope for the best!
> 
> FYI -- I think there are two or three small segments of this that are copy-pasted from the previous version, but all-in-all, this is pretty much entirely re-written or brand-spanking-new. Bits of previous scenes made the cut, but most of it did not. Feel free to skip over what you’ve ready already, but every scene ends differently than it had. 
> 
> Best thing about the change? I’m actually excited to write this thing again. It was losing me for a bit tbh and I was basically gonna finish it out of obligation. I 100% needed to get out of that rut. Enjoy the beginning of me digging myself out of that hole.

Jane holds his hand so long on the drive back to London that he sometimes forgets she’s right there next to him; then, she’ll stroke her thumb across his knuckles and he’ll remember how loved and  _ not alone _ he is. He knows it fills him up with something good, but the feeling still makes him feel as though he wants to cry. He sees this for what it’s continued to be: he’s been broken open, honest, next to her, and she hasn’t left him. 

He says: “I need some petrol,” but what he really means to say is he needs to be privately gracious for the life she’s continued to give him. She nods, takes a deep breath and glances out the window. She looks antsy, as though she’d like to stare out at anything other than long stretches of asphalt herself. 

There’s a garage not far off the motorway that he pulls them into. The attendant, a boy a few years younger than Paul, steps out from the shop when he sees them pull up to one of the pumps. Jane climbs out, caresses her hand along the line of his shoulders as she goes and tells him: “I’ll get us something to eat.”

“Yeah, turrah,” he mutters and when he looks back up at the attendant, who’s now only a few paces away from him, he sees the boy working something out in his head. He’s recognized him; it would only take a few more moments for the boy to realize it.  _ Shit _ , Paul thinks, before he realizes he might have to pull out more than a golden smile  _ now _ . He might not be met with immediate love  _ now _ . 

“Should only need about half,” he says to him, meaning the petrol. His accent must give the game away because the boy freezes, both their hands clinging to the bank note, unsure of what to say. 

Paul realizes it’s his first real interaction with someone who’s only known him and liked him since he became  _ Beatle Paul _ . Everyone else: Brian, John, his family -- they all loved him before he’d made something of himself, and they would continue to do so even if he’d torn it all down that day at the airport. He realizes the boy may not just be hesitant about acknowledging a celebrity, he could be hesitant about acknowledging a  _ queer _ . 

“Half,” the boy repeats. “Yes, sir.”

“Ta,” Paul mumbles, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, turning on his heel to join Jane.

“Sir?” the boy says after him. Paul looks up at him and the boy corrects himself: “Mr. McCartney.” Paul stands up a little straighter, expecting the worst. He holds his breath and then the boy says: “Thank you,” and it’s enough of a shock for him to have to empty his lungs. 

They keep their eyes on one another; something passes between them. A simple similarity. Paul had felt safe and warmed by looking at John -- at Brian, too -- and realizing that it was the same type of man staring back at him. He realizes he feels that way right now, too. The boy offers him a slight nod and it means that they’re both feeling the same thing. 

“What for?” Paul hears himself ask, anyway. He thinks he must know ‘what for’, but he can’t quite believe it. 

“For saying it,” the boy tells him. His voice wavers and it makes Paul step towards him. Paul nods, realizing that it had always been a two-way street: he hadn’t had a man like him -- a queer man on television, in music -- to watch and feel seen and understood by. He hadn’t had that, but he could be that man for somebody else. “There are too many men that would be afraid to say it.”

“No use in denying it,” Paul tells him, as though  _ saying it _ is the least he can do, and maybe it is. “I reckon it hurts more that way.”

“Yeah,” the boy says and his eyes go soft like John’s. Paul thinks he’d say it as many times as it took for John to finally say it with him, for boys like this one in front of him to say it with him. He’d scream it until he was blue in the face, so the others around him that were still too afraid could whisper it beneath him.  _ Queer, queer, queer _ . He’d say it until it didn’t feel so ugly. Until people finally heard it for all that it was: love. 

The boy blinks, realizes he’s probably said too much, before he smiles and puts himself back to work. He holds up the crinkled bank note in his hand and says: “I’ll get this filled for you.”

Paul nods. He thinks he manages to say, “thank you,” before he heads into the shop. His moment of quiet gratitude forgotten, he beelines straight for Jane, ignoring the fact that she’s gone right for his favourite sweets because he thinks acknowledging  _ that _ kindness  _ now _ might make his heart explode. He’s shaking and he isn’t sure why; he doesn’t feel afraid. He realizes he mostly feels resolute, something like proud too, and that’s  _ too much _ . He hadn’t been sure he’d feel proud of himself again. 

He clings to the sleeve of her jacket like a little boy with a secret that’s too electric to articulate. 

“What?” she asks him, as though something’s wrong. “What’s happened?” she asks, casting a glance through the still-empty shop. 

Paul only finds himself wondering what she might have done if anything bad  _ had _ happened, if someone had said something cruel rather than mind-boggling. She looks as though she might have hit them, torn them apart with words, and left them there knowing they’d been ripped to shreds by one of the most beautiful women in Britain. 

“The attendant,” Paul tries to explain. “He knew who I was.”

“What did he say?” she demands, stuffing some of the sweets into her pockets, freeing up her hands in case of a fight, but also planning to knick from a bigot’s shop, if needed. 

“I think he was a bit like me,” Paul says and when Jane knits her eyebrows together, he realizes he needs to say it. If he hoped to be any sort of beacon to anyone else, he needs to say it. “He was queer like me.” Jane opens her mouth to ask more questions, but she must not be able to decide which one to go with, so Paul adds: “He told me ‘thank you’,” and she immediately softens. She softens and then he feels her hands at his forearms, then his wrists, then clinging right back to him. She smiles at him and he realizes that she feels proud of him too. “Do you think this might do some good?”

She laughs, but Paul can see the way she’s using it to hide the fact that she’s crying. She holds his face in both hands and kisses him, right on the lips, a chaste thing that says ‘I love you’ in a way a kiss never has before. “It’s going to save somebody’s life, you idiot,” she tells him, hardly pulling far enough away from him to say it. He laughs against her cheek, so she laughs again, too. Then, she shakes her head as she pulls away, leaving her hands at his cheeks. She looks him over, dreads all the bad that will have to come from this too, but must decide he’s strong enough for it. 

She tells him: “I love you,” and then has to shake her head at herself, at how much she means it. 

“I love you too,” he says back because he can’t stand her thinking she’s the only one having that depth of feeling. She wraps her arms around his middle and buries her cheek into the collar of his jacket and he just holds her there. He thinks he could stay here forever. 

\--

There’s a mess of reporters still outside Cavendish once they arrive. 

“Shit,” Paul mumbles as he tries to take the turn into his front garden. They hardly allow him an inch. He can hear them all shouting at him, snapping pictures. He even hears one of them yank at his door handle, which is thankfully still locked, but it’s enough to frighten him. He wants to crank the radio up loud, cover up some of this sensory overload. Next to him, Jane reaches out for his hand and gives it a squeeze. It means to say  _ it’s alright _ , though they both know that it isn’t. 

Nobody budges; Paul realizes he can’t open his door, he can’t get out and open up the gate. He’s  _ stuck  _ here, with Jane next to him, until he gives them something that they can write down. It’s all going exactly to their plan. He reaches for his window, starts to roll it down and feels Jane squeeze at his hand tighter. 

“Paul, don’t,” she instructs him, but when he looks at her, he sees that she’s afraid too and he realizes he can’t  _ keep her here _ . He has to  _ do _ something. 

“It’s alright,” he tells her (though they both know that it isn’t), then rolls his window halfway down before there’s a recorder shoved into his face. Pushing it away, trying to show them that he can speak without being treated like an animal, he holds his hand out to them. “Just let me through,” he tells him. “I’ll come back out once the car’s parked, just let me through.” His words only add to the commotion; those close enough to have heard him press back against their colleagues, desperate to get a word from Beatle Paul any way that they can. 

Then, the gate is pulled open, and there, through the throng of people is his housekeeper, Rose. She looks unafraid enough for the whole lot of them. She pushes the gates open and tries to guide him through, placing herself between his car and anybody who might think they’re entitled to trespass. As soon as he’s able to maneuver the car around the gate, she shoves it closed, and it’s something of a moat around them. 

They can still hear the shouts of the press on the other side, but it feels good to have something between them. Paul takes a deep breath, stares straight out the windshield, feeling Jane’s eyes on him. She shuffles closer to him, then tucks some hair behind his ear. She must feel it too: the way any sort of pride has left them. 

“I love you,” she tells him again, but it hurts that this time she means:  _ I’ll protect you _ . 

He nods and says: “I know,” and they both hear it for the ‘thank you’ that it is. 

Then, he unbuckles his seatbelt and starts to climb out. For a moment, Jane stays where she is, but when she sees him head ‘round the car, not grabbing their things from the boot, but heading back towards the shut gate, she climbs out herself, circling the car after him. 

“Paul!” she shouts at his back. “You don’t have to say anything,” she says to him and he realizes that she’s close enough to stop him, so he reaches out for the latch, but she’s so  _ quick _ , so  _ persistent _ , that she holds the latch still, and they’re just  _ there _ , trying to protect one another in their own ways, listening to the wave of reporters’ voices just on the other side of this gate. “They aren’t expecting you to,” she insists. 

“I said I would,” he tells her, and he  _ realizes _ it just makes him sound like some kind of circus attraction, but he also knows full-well that showing face is the only way to make anybody leave. Once they get what they’re craving, they lose interest. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she tries. 

“I want them to  _ leave _ ,” he persists. “They’ll stay here forever if I don’t say anything,” She shakes her head at him. “It’s why I said anything in the first place. If you let them answer their own questions, they get to say whatever they want about you.”

“They’ll always say whatever they want about you,” she tells him, and he realizes she might have more experience in this department than him, she might be right, but he realizes that he’s afraid because they’ve wanted to make him afraid. He was regretful because they’d wanted him to wish he’d never been honest. But he’s learned: he lived better when he was unafraid and truthful. Jane and Jim and Mike, Brian too, they loved him better for being truthful. 

“They don’t scare me,” he tells her, not because it’s true, but because he’d rather say it enough times for it to become true. She stares up at him, imploring him to back down, but she must understand what being afraid looks like too. She must understand that coming out and then going right back in is worse than coming out at every chance he gets. 

“You don’t have to do this,” she tells him, and she means be some sort of sacrificial lamb, she means live loudly so others can live quietly, she means be a voice. But he also hears the defeat in her voice, because when he tells her: “I  _ want _ to,” she doesn’t look surprised, she just looks sad. But still, she nods, and she takes her hand off the latch and lets him live the way he’d like to. 

She follows him through that gate, though. She follows him and holds his hand. She stays quiet next to him, though he can feel her trembling with just how much she wants to say. For the first time, he wonders what they might write about her in all of this. 

He thinks he must be articulate enough, he must be forceful enough, because slowly, the questions stop coming. Slowly, they get what they want, or they realize they aren’t and won’t be. He doesn’t remember what he says. All he remembers is that he’s pretending to be unafraid and that Jane is next to him. He thinks she guides him back in through the gate before he’s finished saying everything he’d like to say, but as soon as the gate’s shut behind them and they’re alone, he’s glad she’s done it. 

There’s soup cooking on the stove, Paul can smell the second he walks in through the door; he wonders when exactly Rose put it on. As soon as she’d seen his face outside, or could she have predicted the state he’d be in and had put it on this afternoon. She’s done it before; when the press were here swarming after he’d admitted to taking LSD. As soon as he’d finished the interview, he’d stepped back into the house to a warm bowl of soup. Rose makes him think of his mother. More often than he’d like to admit. 

Then, he hears Martha barking from deeper in the house, scrambling to get to the front door. Smiling, Paul drops his case on the floor in anticipation. Martha comes bounding towards him and Paul can’t even remember feeling sad. She jumps up at his thighs, desperately licking his hands, any strip of skin she can find. 

“She’s gone quite mad without you,” Rose observes from the doorway to the kitchen. Paul looks up at her, smiling, then sees that she hasn’t ducked back into the kitchen. Something’s on her mind; Paul knows her well enough to see that. A silent ‘what’s up?’ passes between them, so she sighs and tells him: “Mr. Harrison called for you this morning.” 

He starts to nod. “Okay,” he says. “Thanks, Rose.” 

“It seemed quite important.” 

Jane glances at him and he realizes he hasn’t spoken to George since he’d left Rishikesh. His best mate, with all this whirlwind around him, and they haven’t spoken to each other. The thought makes him feel lonely, so he says what he knows she wants to hear: “I’ll ring him back.” She nods, but she stays where she is, so Paul sighs and starts to pull himself up to his feet. “Why don’t I call him now?” She smiles approvingly. 

Even Jane seems to smile slightly, then she tugs at his bag and says: “I’ll get us unpacked.”

He nods, then shuffles towards his music room. Martha follows him and he lets her. She climbs up on the couch and then into his lap when he sits down next to her. He tugs the telephone off the side table and holds it on his knee. He stares down at the dial as though it might start ringing George on it’s own. He realizes he’s spent most of the weekend lamenting that he hadn’t called George or Rich, but suddenly, the prospect seems too daunting. What’s he bloody meant to say?

“Christ, sod it,” he mutters.

It’s Pattie who answers, which is quite nice, it staves off the inevitable for just a moment longer. 

“ _ Paul _ ,” she says, as soon as she hears his voice on the line. “Are you alright? We’ve been so worried about you,” she rambles. Before he can tell her that he’s fine, he hears George’s distant voice asking:  _ is that Paul? _ There’s a bit of shuffling before George’s unmistakable voice comes down the line. “ _ Paul _ ,” he says, mirroring Pattie in a way only married couples can. 

“Hey, Geo,” Paul mutters back. 

“Are you back in London, then?” he asks. 

“Does everybody know I ran home with me tail between my legs?” Paul asks bitterly. George pauses, letting some biting returned remark pass quietly between them. He must realize that it isn’t what Paul needs, and Paul is gracious for it. He sighs at the silence between them because it makes him tack on: “Sorry. It wasn’t a great drive back.”

“S’alright,” George answers, and it  _ actually _ is. “So, you saw your Da’?”

“Yeah.”

“How is he?”

“As good as you’d imagine,” Paul answers. 

“And you two are…?” He trails off, not ready to accept a world where the McCartney clan broke in half. 

“We’re fine,” Paul assures him, then realizes it’s more than that. “We had a good chat. I think we’re better, actually.”

“Well, that’s good, innit?” Paul starts to nod, before the line starts to fall silent. Silence with George always meant he had nothing to say or he had something important he was about to say, and Paul could only guess at which one it was this time. “What about you?” he asks gently. “Are  _ you _ alright?”

Paul takes a deep breath because his voice sounds too caring, too personal and devoted. He realizes that if they were seeing one another in person, George would be touching him, and that makes him want to cry. “You’ve seen the news,” he mutters back. 

George just says: “I asked if you were alright.”

Paul swallows hard, knows an opened door when he sees one, so he takes a shaky inhale and says: “I don’t know.” George sighs down on the line on the other side. Paul realizes George wishes they were doing this in person too. “Everything’s fucked,” he starts, before he remembers his father and Jane and the boy at the garage, so he adds: “And...  _ great? _ I don’t know. I feel like I’m all over the place.”

“I reckon you are,” George says gently. 

“You haven’t asked if it’s true,” Paul observes. 

George pauses; Paul can hear him weighing all of his options. “Would you like me to?”

His gut instinct is to petulantly tell George  _ no _ , that he’s come out and hasn’t stopped coming out for days. But then, he’d also like to say  _ yes _ . To be everything he’s ever been in front of his best friend. And he realizes that all George has done is give him the option for either. He feels like he hasn’t had an option for days. It’s too kind, it’s too wise, it’s too… Paul realizes George has done this before. And that doesn’t land like a stone in his stomach the way he’d thought it might. It just makes him glad that John’s told him this about himself already. 

“I probably should have told you before,” he says, realizing just how safe he is, here with George, but also just how safe he’s always been. 

“Nah,” George mumbles back. “You’re telling me now,” he says.  _ When you’re ready. _

“I reckon I was embarrassed,” he says, but he means to say  _ ashamed _ . And the fact that he’s ashamed now of having been ashamed, it makes him go hot under the collar, like he’s got to fix this all up with a pretty explanation. “I mean, Christ, we grew up together, we’ve shared beds, I didn’t think you’d --”

“That’s stupid,” George tells him flatly. 

“I know it is!” Paul answers. 

“I was always the one that ended up wrapped ‘round you, anyway,” George adds and it makes Paul laugh before he realizes he wants to. It makes something come back between them. Something light and easy that feels old and brand new. It feels so precious a thing, that Paul hates to ask, hates to risk breaking it: “You wouldn’t have cared?”

“No,” George promises. “And if anybody says otherwise, it’s all shite.”

“Have you spoken to Richie at all?” Paul ventures. 

“He’s not gonna say any different,” George assures him and Paul wonders why he’d even needed the assurance in the first place. Of course he’d known, but he’d just needed to hear George say it. “He’s been worried about you too. We didn’t want to bombard you with phone calls.”

“Yeah,” Paul says and he realizes that ‘we’ means the three of them, it includes John. “You’ve spoken to John, then?” he asks. He holds his breath, waiting for George’s answer, and he realizes that George is holding his breath in turn. They both know the full story, but neither wants to say it. 

Letting him off the hook, letting him down easy, George finally says: “Yes.”

And it brings the thing to light that they’ve been ignoring for years: they were better friends to the people around them than they were to each other. They cultivated care and honesty with everyone but each other. And maybe that’s what happens when you’ve known someone for so long; you forget how much they still need from you. They grow into a constant, forgetting that they’re still your favourite human being. Paul realizes just how much this whole thing is about wanting to  _ be better _ . It isn’t just about his pride; it’s about building himself into something well-rounded, something loving and consistent, and unafraid of what loving someone else might do to him. 

He wants to tell George that he’s his best friend, but he realizes he really just needs to show him. He realizes if George hadn’t taken them all to India, if he hadn’t made them all look in at themselves, he might have never realized that. George would always make him  _ better _ . He hoped he could figure out how to do the same. 

“You should talk to him,” George urges, meaning John. It’s tough love, but it’s love all the same. Paul sighs, so George changes the subject: “I was thinking,” he says, clearing something from his throat. “I’ve got a bunch of new songs.” Paul perks up at that, throwing a glance at one of his acoustics up against the wall opposite him. “Might help us all out to get into the studio.”

Paul sighs graciously; he can’t believe how long he’s been thinking the same thing without saying it. He remembers playing his guitar every waking moment after his mother died; he’d wanted to do the same now. His hands were itching for it. “Yeah?”

“Why don’t you lot come ‘round?” George offers. “We can record our stuff here. Take it into George that way.”

“Yeah, alright,” Paul says back, though he can’t help the way he’s smiling. 

“We’ll call the lads in the morning?” George says. “Give them the plan.”

“Okay.”

“Right,” George says, then, softly: “Do you want to ring John, or should I?” 

“I’ll talk to him,” Paul concludes and he can hear the way it makes George smile, that he’s given the right answer.

“Fab,” George tells him, then sighs contentedly. “Well, I should let you go. You’ll call me though, will you?” George says. He quietly passes him:  _ if you need me _ . Paul hears it and he’s glad for it.

“I will, yeah,” he says back, and he thinks he actually means it. 

\--

He and Jane end up on the sofa together, grazing on the things Rose leaves them in the kitchen, drinking tea; napping like spoiled house cats with Martha between them, on top of them, wriggled in between their bodies and the cushions. Paul can’t believe that he’s still tired, considering how much he’d slept in Liverpool. He thinks it must be all the exhaustion he’s felt all his life, hiding, holding stiff whenever anyone got too close, it’s all cracked in half and finally feels like he can properly sleep. 

Paul catches the beginning of an Italian romance film, misses the middle, then wakes up for the last half hour. When the credits start to roll, he realizes he can’t hear anything other than Martha’s steady breathing underneath the soft instrumental music. There aren’t any voices outside needed to be drowned out by the television. There aren’t giggling girls shouting for him to look at them through the front window. There’s  _ nothing _ . He sits himself up and it’s enough to grab Jane’s attention from the television. She watches him quizzically as he listens harder, just to make sure he’s right. 

“What is it?” she asks and she sounds so sleepy and peaceful, Paul almost doesn’t bring it up, almost doesn’t want to remind her of the way his front gate had been only a few hours ago. 

“It’s quiet out there,” he tells her, then lays himself back down against the arm of the couch, getting himself comfortable. 

She smiles at him, then rolls his eyes. “Don’t you mean to say ‘I was right and you were wrong’?” she teases. 

He laughs and then shrugs. He doesn’t need to say it. Doesn’t really want to, frankly. He sighs and feels content about it. It must be catching because Jane does the same. It’s nice, Paul realizes, to be on the same page as someone. He thinks he must be breathing so easy because Jane is doing the same next to him. He digs his feet underneath her thigh and she winces at how cold his feet must be; it makes them both laugh. He suddenly remembers John doing that to him in Lesbos. His smile falters slightly; it  _ is _ nice to be on the same page as someone, but he wishes that person was John. 

He’s found peace with his father and now Jane; it’s the stark lack of it with John that hurts the most. 

“Even the girls have left,” Jane suddenly observes. She raises her eyebrows at him; he remembers the fights they’d had about the Scruffs outside, about Paul humouring them, allowing them to slag Jane off whenever she wasn’t around. He wonders if they might have made it if the girls had left him alone earlier, but shakes his head at the thought. There was more about them that didn’t work. He realizes that she would have left him a hell of a lot sooner if he hadn’t trusted the Scruffs to lie for him.  _ That _ makes him grimace; it reveals too much about him. Jane must know about the other women, or, that’s what he tells himself, at least. She must know, and yet, she’s stayed with him anyway. 

“They’ve finally realized that they never had a chance,” he says, and he isn’t exactly sure what he means by it. He supposes he means it quite plainly: they’d never had a chance at him, it just took something big to make them see it. But he realizes Jane must think he means something else because she frowns slightly, then looks away from him, as though she’s got a question she doesn’t want to ask. But Paul thinks she deserves to, so he presses her gently: “What?” 

She just shrugs, plays with the hem of the blanket over their legs. She glances back at Paul, realizes he’s still waiting for her to say something, so she sighs, her shoulders sagging inward and she stammers: “Well, I just…” She shrugs again, so Paul sits up, shuffles closer to her, and sits cross-legged next to her, running his hand down her arm, then squeezes at her elbow when she won’t continue. “What do you mean by that?” she asks, shrugging helplessly. “You’ve never said they didn’t have a chance, not until now. Did they never have a chance  _ because _ they were girls?”

“They were too young --” He means to add something about it being strange to fuck a fan, but God knows he’s done it. Either way, Jane doesn’t let him.

“Because we haven’t really spoken about it,” she continues and Paul wires his mouth shut and lets her finish. “I know there are men who prefer men, but there are also men who like both.” Paul never thought he’d be grateful for her career in the theatre, but it makes him breathe a little easier when she says:  _ men who like both _ . Because he  _ isn’t _ gay. He isn’t exclusively interested in men. In fact, he’s hardly interested in men at all, but he hasn’t got the heart to tell her that he’s really just a man who likes  _ John _ . 

“I think…” he starts carefully. He feels her shuffle closer to him and she swallows something down. She’s nervous, Paul realizes and it suddenly strikes him: his answer to this question could change the way she remembers the last five years of her life. “I’m a man who likes both,” he tells her and he says it as strongly as he can because he can’t quite believe how much he needs her to trust him, to trust the things he’s told her since he was twenty-one. She nods, deliberately hiding her own relief and it breaks his heart, to have her thinking he might have been faking it all along. “We broke apart before all this shite,” he says. “I still think that was the right decision.” She nods in agreement. “But we didn’t break up because I didn’t want to fake it anymore. I was never faking anything.”

She immediately goes guilty. She shakes her head at him and says: “I didn’t mean to imply --”

“It’s alright,” he assures her and goes for her hands. He holds onto them, runs his thumb along the back of her knuckles. “I loved you,” he assures. “I loved you all along.”

“You’re the first person I’ve ever loved,” she confesses, but of course Paul had known that. He’d told her the same had been true for him, too. And it  _ had _ been; he’d thought it was true. She was the first person that he said ‘I love you’ to and then was able to kiss. She was the first person he’d lived with and slept in the same bed. She was the first person to make him actively want to be better, smarter. He’d loved her and she’d loved him right back. That still has to  _ mean _ something, to the both of them. 

He realizes that in the only ways that really mattered, he’d loved her first too. He’d love her for the rest of his life. 

“There will be another,” he tells her. 

She sniffles and laughs, meaning to look confident, and even with tears in her eyes, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, she looks the part when she says: “Of course there will.” Paul smiles back at her and sees the life he’s always wanted for her: where she’s happy, successful, loving a man who’s capable of loving her the right way, of being faithful and in awe of everything she was able to do. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t better to you,” he finally tells her and it makes them both gasp. It’s the thing between them that neither of them had ever dared to say: that they broke up because Paul wasn’t good enough. And it isn’t a jab, it’s just the truth. So, she doesn’t correct him, she doesn’t tell him that he was the best boyfriend she could have asked for. She just nods, unable to speak around the sob that’s hoping to make its way up through her for a moment. Then, like the professional actress she is, she takes a deep breath and says: “I’m sorry about that too.”

He nods, takes that for what it is, and just lets it wash over him. The dawning realization that he could have saved something that was so good for him. He takes a deep breath and realizes he’d made Jane wonder if he ever loved him; he’d made John wonder the same thing. Was that just characteristic of his loving someone? He doesn’t want to make anybody wonder. He wants them to  _ know _ that he loves them and feel stronger for it. The way Jane’s love and his father’s love and Brian’s, the same way they’d all made him stronger. 

He hears his own name on the television before he realizes that the credits of that Italian film have rolled over. Jane hears it too. Despite themselves, they turn towards the report. Paul watches them step out through his front gate and he holds his breath. He looks horrible. Exhausted and afraid, and he  _ hates _ that he’d thought himself brave for doing this. 

He watches himself tell them: “You won’t scare me into taking it back,” and he wonders if that’s true. 

He feels Jane squeeze his hand as he tells them: “It’s true, it’s all true, what else would you like me to say?”

“Christ,” he mutters to himself, going red with how little strength there is in his voice. Jane watches him protectively; she doesn’t have the chance to tell him he did well before he says: “I look  _ terrified _ .”

“So what?” she immediately tells him. She takes one of his hands in hers and rubs circles in his shoulder with the other. “So what if you look terrified,” she tells him. “Do you hear what you’re saying?”

“It’s all shite if I can’t back it up,” he mutters. 

He feels her kiss the top of his head and then she just stays there.”You’re allowed to be afraid when you’re saying something important,” she promises him. “It’s brave to say the things you mean even when you’re scared.” He nods and then lowers his head down onto her shoulder. Sighing, he just lets her wrap her arm around his shoulders. They watch him finish, they watch them retreat back behind the gate, and Paul finally feels like he can breathe again. 

She kisses him again, then starts to card her fingers through his hair. He realizes that she loves his bravery the way he’d loved John’s.  _ Saying the things you mean even when you’re scared _ . He was at his best when he was doing that. He was at his worst when he was doing the opposite. He closes his eyes and sees himself in the back of that limo at the airport. Terrified and  _ lying _ through his teeth. Terrified and sounding strong simply because he was saying words he didn’t mean. 

He thinks about what he might tell John in the morning; what else will he say other than:  _ will you come to George’s to start on the album? _ There was so much more between them that needed to be said. He wonders if it’s even right to be saying it all over the telephone. He realizes that John will want to look at him. He’ll want to see where he’s lying. Except, he won’t be. He resolves for every word that comes out of his mouth to be honest and brave. He resolves to go to John’s flat and  _ see _ him. 

\--

Paul doesn’t have much time to think about whether this might be a bad idea or not; he only has time to take a few deep breaths before John’s front door is pulled wide open, showing a grinning Pete Shotton, whose smile dullens down as soon as he sees the familiar face in front of him. He glances uneasily over his shoulder, deeper into the flat and then just says: “Oh, er…” but still, it means exactly what he’d intended it to:  _ this can’t be good _ . 

“Hiya, Pete,” Paul says to him imperviously, keeping his eyes aloof and anywhere other than the lad’s face for fear he might give himself away. “Is John in?”

Pete looks back over his shoulder again and Paul swears he can actually  _ hear _ the gears running wild in his head, trapped somewhere between telling a lie or a half-truth. Paul almost expects him to turn him away, but instead, he says: “He is, yeah.” Paul glances up to see that Pete’s gone soft. He taps his fingers nervously on the edge of the doorframe and he’s chewing a hole through his bottom lip the same way Paul does when he’s got to do something he doesn’t want to. He sighs heavily, seems to come to a decision, then says: “Give me a mo’.”

The door closes slightly, not all the way, and Pete steps deeper into the flat. Stepping forward, Paul tries to listen through the thick oak door as best he can, but all he gets are hushed voices and rushed footsteps. He steps back off the first step just as John yanks the door open and looks down at him as if he’d just needed to see it for himself: after the way things had ended between them, Paul was  _ still _ here to see him. 

“Hi,” Paul says, and it isn’t enough. Paul glances over John’s shoulder at Pete who winces at how  _ not enough _ it is as he steps into a pair of brogues. “Can I come in?” he tries again. 

To his credit, John doesn’t spit back:  _ why _ ? the way Paul thought he might have. There’s a moment where he does nothing at all, so Paul figures he must be convincing himself not to be cruel. He gives a minute nod and then steps away from the door, letting Paul show himself inside. 

He and Pete shoulder past one another as they each step through the threshold. Pete pauses at the front step, digging his hands into his pockets awkwardly. “I’ll nip out to get us some coffees, yeah?” he says past Paul, to John instead. Paul nods anyway; he isn’t sure why. He hears John say: “Sure,” and he sounds so quiet, so unsure, that it makes Paul wonder if he ought to just follow Pete through that door and leave John alone, but then the door’s shutting on him, and everything goes still and quiet. 

Paul keeps his eye on the deadbolt as Pete twists it locked from the outside. He swallows hard and just keeps his eyes there, until he hears John’s socked feet pad in back towards the sitting room. He hears John in the next room and it  _ hurts _ that he wants to leave. It  _ hurts _ that things feel as though they’ve been broken beyond repair and that he’s pushed them here. 

He follows John into the sitting room, watches him pace from one side to another, collecting the bits of mess that really only make the flat look lived-in. He grabs a pair of toddler’s socks off the couch and tosses them into the first bedroom in the hallway. He steps back into the sitting room, sees Paul watching and seems to go a bit red. “We had the kid over for dinner last night,” he says, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder towards the room he’d tossed the socks into, then nods back out to the sitting room, as if a child being here explains away the mess, and it sort of does, Paul realizes. “We never got ‘round to clearing up.”

“That’s alright,” Paul tells him and he means it more sincerely than he must sound. He means it because it makes him feel like he’s gone back home to visit his father, when Ruth had been younger, how her and Angela had made life easier than it had been. He hopes Julian made John feel that way, too. “It’s not so bad.” John nods, but he still gathers a few empty glasses off a side table and takes them into the kitchen. Paul follows him there, too. By the time he gets there, John’s putting on some tea, coffees be damned, and Paul realizes that Pete was never planning to come back any time soon.

Paul sidles up next to him at the counter; he watches John’s hands as he fills the kettle with some water, switches on the gas stove. He watches John’s hands as he sets them on the edge of the countertop and sighs heavily. They haven’t spoken to one another yet, not really; that makes John sad, too. Paul has to look away; he has to distract himself from how sad they both feel. He notices the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. 

“Did you do the cooking?” he asks gently. If they were on better terms, he might even call it teasing, so there’s this sweet warmth of relief rushing through him when he sees John roll his eyes at him, as though he’s picked up on the playful jab. “Well?”

“Yes, I did the cooking,” John says. He looks up at Paul, his shoulders set, and there’s something of a grin on his face, so Paul smiles back in hopes that it’ll just make him smile more. Paul opens his mouth to push him a little further, but John says: “Whatever you’re about to say: don’t be rude.”

“I only meant to ask how it had turned out,” Paul defends, his hands held up in surrender. John actually  _ laughs _ and it changes the room. John’s  _ always _ been able to do that.

“It was quite good, thank you very much,” John tells him matter-of-factly. “Your confidence in my ability to follow a recipe is duly noted.”

“You’ve never cooked for me,” Paul says, nudging him with his elbow. John smiles, but then his smile starts to fall because he must see the version of themselves that had stayed in Lesbos, the version of himself that had proudly cooked a meal from scratch for the man he loves. Paul sees that beautiful smile start to fall, so he tries to save it, tries to keep his tone light and playful: “How am I meant to know?” But it’s too late. 

The corner of John’s mouth twitches upward as he tries to offer another smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He turns back to the kettle on the stove, checks the temperature, and busies himself with gathering a few teabags. “I suppose you wouldn’t,” he mutters, as if he just wants to save the room from falling into silence, but it does anyway. 

“John --” Paul tries, but John covers him up with: “I saw you on the television last night.”

“Yeah?” Paul tries, because he  _ knows _ what he said, he  _ knows _ he can’t use:  _ it just came out _ as an excuse anymore, because he’d done it again: he’d done it clearly, calmly, and deliberately. 

“Jools did too,” John adds and somewhere deep-down, the part of themselves that still wished they could be normal, could have lived a life without having met each other, makes him wonder if that’s some kind of dig at his modesty or morals. It’s something Mimi would say, Paul realizes. 

“How did I look?” Paul asks, adding a bit of a flourish that he might not have a month ago. He stands himself up a little taller, puffs his chest out, because, he realizes, that’s all he has to fight against this feeling. His own pride is all he has. John looks him over, must see this posturing for what it is, because it just makes him look sorry for him. 

“Good, yeah,” he manages, and Paul realizes he must feel sorry for himself, too.

“I don’t want to hide it anymore, John,” Paul tells him. “I  _ meant _ that. I don’t think I could anymore, even if I wanted to.”

John balks out a weak laugh, then turns his attention down to the whistling kettle on the stove. He pours the steaming water into the teapot and says: “Yeah,” as if he means to say:  _ that’s just the trouble isn’t it? _

“I know you think I’m wrong,” Paul tries and he just sees John shake his head at him sullenly, keeping his eyes down on the steeping tea in front of him. “But John,  _ for me _ ,” he says, because he realizes he’s talked about his own coming out in terms of how it might affect the people around him more than himself. He finally wants to turn that inward. Back from Liverpool, back home, still clinging to the people left who loved him despite it, he wants to talk about how it had hurt him too. “For me,” he repeats. “It would have hurt more to say it wasn’t true.” John doesn’t look convinced and Paul realizes that  _ he _ would know. He would know the difference between saying it and not saying. If John isn’t convinced, he realizes that that means something. “Doesn’t it?” he hears himself say, because he just needs to hear John say:  _ you’re right _ . “Doesn’t it hurt you more now than it did when we --”

“Everybody fucks in secret, Paul,” John tells him and it feels like John’s just hit him; that that’s how he’d call the things they did together. “It’s not so bad,” he mutters. He takes the steeped tea to the dinner table, fills two mugs and then must not know what else to do. He must have just heard himself too because he winces at his own choice of words. “It’s nobody’s business, is all I mean,” he corrects. “Least of all the papers.”

“Since when do you care about what the papers write about you?” Paul spits back because he can’t quite believe  _ how much _ he needs to hear John tell him: you were right to say it.

“I  _ don’t _ ,” John pushes back, just on instinct, because he knows that’s what he’s meant to say, what he’d  _ usually _ say, but something’s changed. He looks as though he’s about to say what that thing is, but then he must resolve himself. He stands up a little straighter and says: “You’re not invincible to what they say either,” and that word:  _ either _ , it makes Paul realize he’s missing a piece. He doesn’t know what that piece is yet and maybe John will never tell him, but he knows better than to ask for what John’s guarding. He wants nothing more than to ask:  _ what’s happened? Why are you so scared? _ but he doesn’t and he hates that he doesn’t because he knows it’s the version of himself in bed in Lesbos with John that would be brave enough to ask. “You think that just because you’re a Beatle they won’t find a way to put you in prison for this?”

Paul shakes his head; he doesn’t want to say that the thought’s never occurred to him. “Nobody’s tried to put Brian away,” Paul says and John just scoffs at him. “Everybody  _ knows _ , John, but they’d never --”

“Yeah, everybody  _ knows _ ,” John answers, turning to look at Paul, tucking his long hair back behind his ears. “The point is they don’t  _ say _ it. They  _ know,  _ of course they bloody _ know _ , but he gets to kiss men and be with them because when he’s in a room alone with them, people can pretend that they’re misunderstanding.”

“That’s not --” Paul tries and he means to say that that’s no way to exist in this world, but John just talks over him. 

“Now that you’ve said it. Every room you go into, every man you’re with, people will  _ know _ and they’ll  _ hate _ that they know,” John explains and something switches on in Paul’s head. He realizes that there are rules to this world he’s now found himself in, rules that he’s broken. Hidden meanings and messages that, for years, kept men like him alive. He wonders how many messages he’d missed all his life because he didn’t  _ know _ , because he wasn’t  _ queer enough _ . 

“So, it’s still this, then?” he says, because he’s angry. He’s angry because he’ll take the brunt of all the bigots, he’ll be the one to fight tooth and nail, but he’ll still just always feel  _ not queer enough _ . And he’s got nowhere else to direct this anger but back at John. “You’re afraid you’ll be queer by association? That people will realize that every room I’ve ever walked into has been with you?”

John sighs heavily; he’s tired, Paul’s tired too. He wishes that they’d both just say what they mean. 

“Do you really believe that it hurts less now than it did when we were on that island?” John asks and it’s  _ exactly _ what he means to ask. The starkness of it pierces through them both. The clarity of the answer:  _ no _ , fills the room around them. “Wasn’t it better there?” John asks. He steps away from the tea, towards Paul, and Paul can’t believe how much he wants John to touch him. “Or, or in India?” he continues, then he says something that neither of them have ever acknowledged; he says: “Or Paris?”

The room goes electric; the same way it had any time they were alone together that trip. They’d never breathed a word of anything other than friendship to one another, no matter how many pints deep, but there’d always been something different between them, something that had felt distinctly romantic. Paul remembers thinking that he’d wanted to say  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ so badly that it had all come pouring out of his eyes, even when he hadn’t meant for it to. He remembers feeling flushed and embarrassed at what John might think of him, but always knowing somewhere deep-down that John felt the same way, because the only way he’d ever feel  _ that much _ love in a room would be if John was handing it to him. 

When Paul doesn’t say anything back, John sighs again, spoons some sugar into his tea and quietly tells him: “I get why you’ve said it.” It makes Paul hold his breath. “I understand wanting to do some good with all this Beatle business, making something easier for people who have never had it easy. And if you weren’t you and I wasn’t me, I would say ‘thank you’. I just…” He shakes his head at himself. “You’ll never get to love somebody quietly. And after all this divorce shite and what happened after I went to Spain, quiet’s the only way I’d want it.”

Paul realizes that John’s always been the most vocally political, but maybe he’s been the most quietly, too. Choosing to love Paul, choosing to say it, that would be the moment that everyone writing about this time in history will miss. If  _ anything _ comes from this, this book, Paul’s confession, they won’t see that it was all made possible in a bed on some Greek island.

“Sometimes, I wish we gave up on this whole game,” John admits. “Being Beatles. Things might have been simpler.”

“But we are Beatles,” Paul says gently. “And I’ve  _ said it _ .”

“Yeah…”

“We never would have gone to Greece,” Paul says because he needs John to see the good that they’ve foraged out of this life together. 

“No,” he allows, then something of a fond smile crosses his lips. “We might have stayed in Paris, though,” he says, and all Paul can offer him back is a dry laugh, because it  _ isn’t true _ . They both know that it isn’t true. It’s nostalgia for something they’ve never had. John sees it too because he asks: “Do you think you would have hit me if I’d told you then?”

Paul sighs; he closes his eyes and remembers how he’d felt when John had told him about Brian and Stuart in Lesbos. He remembers that painful swirl of fear, jealousy, and dreaded relief. It had almost been too much then. He can’t imagine himself, at nineteen, having handled it particularly well, so he says: “I reckon you’d have never seen me again,” and the truth of it hits them both. 

John smiles and says: “I was so torn up about it, I probably would have killed myself before telling you, anyroad,” and it means:  _ it’s alright _ , it means that he was just as afraid of the thing between them as Paul had been. 

They ran from it, then, and they’d just kept running. Paul had dug his head so deep into the sand that he hadn’t even known how much pain he’d been in, but looking at John now, the version that was finally brave enough to say something and still ended up empty-handed, and Paul realizes that John’s known all along just how much pain he was in, he’s known all along that Paul would always miss the messages he sent to him. 

“Is that how long you’ve loved me?” Paul asks, but what he really means to ask is:  _ how long have I been hurting you? _ “Since Paris?”

John scoffs and goes a bit red .”Don’t make it sound so pathetic, Paul.”

“I’m just asking,” Paul offers gently. 

John must hear or see the sincerity of it, or both, because he says: “I think so.” Then amends with: “I think I probably loved you when I realized I was still alive after Julia died.”

Paul remembers meeting John for the first time. He remembers feeling as though the world had shifted from this sad painful thing to something filled with music and laughter, and maybe with beer and harsh words too, but it was the love he’d always remember. He realizes John was the first person he loved after his mother died. The saving power of that isn’t lost on him. 

“I might have loved you then too,” he says, and hates that he’s never told him that. “If I’d just looked, I might have seen it for what it was.”

“You don’t want to look,” John assures him, and he says ‘you’, but he just means everyone.  _ Nobody _ wants to look at the things inside of them that are ugly or scary or different. 

“No,” Paul agrees. “But you looked anyway.” John would always look first; he’d done it when they were kids and he did it again in Greece. He would  _ always _ be the one that looked first. 

“Stuart made me look,” John says, as if that makes it any less strong of him. “Brian, too.”

“You did the same for me,” Paul tells him, because he knows John sees Stuart and Brian as these miraculous figures for what they’d shown him. Paul wants nothing more than for John to see himself that way too. “Eventually,” Paul amends, because he just  _ wishes _ he’d listened to John sooner. He wishes he’d looked when John had wanted him to. “You know,” he starts. “One day, people might look back at me, at what I’ve said, and they’ll say that I was brave.” John nods and looks as though he really means that. “But you were brave when it mattered.” John immediately recoils back into himself. He shakes his head and reaches for his cup of tea, so Paul stops him. He puts his hand on top of John’s and tells him: “ _ You _ made me look.” When it looks like John’s maybe started to believe him, Paul presses on. “And maybe I said what I did in front of the cameras, but I was too afraid to tell you I loved you back. I was so afraid that I threw it in your face.” John blinks and looks away. Paul realizes he’s made him cry. And it hits him all over again:  _ John thinks you don’t love him _ . Paul squeezes at John’s hands, steps closer to him when John  _ still _ can’t look up at him. “When things are better, and people actually care about us, they might ask me where I ever got the nerve and I’ll know it was because you told me first. So….” Paul swallows hard, doesn’t want his voice to shake, because he’s resolute in this. John  _ can’t  _ doubt him. “So, you  _ get _ to be afraid. You get to be afraid of what I’ve done. But I just…” Finally, John’s able to look at him and Paul’s so glad for it. “I need you to know that I was wrong to make you afraid that I didn’t love you.”

John swallows hard, looks away again, and says: “I do know that --”

But Paul needs him to look at him. He needs to see the love and truth pouring out of him, because it’s all John’s to begin with. He needs some of it back.

“Because I do,” Paul tells him. “I love you.” John blinks and a tear runs down his cheek; he isn’t quick enough to swat it away. “I loved you in Greece. I loved you when you were so brave and you told me. But I love you when you’re afraid, too.”

“Christ, Paul,” John mutters and tugs his hands away from him. He takes a step back towards the counter, meaning to look like he’s doing something, but he just stands still.

“I love you when you push me away,” he says, keeping the space between them that John needs. “I love you when you think you don’t deserve it.” Paul watches that strike a nerve. His back still to him, he sees the way John’s shoulders sag towards the floor. “I love you when you think there isn’t anything left. I love all of it.” John sighs, he looks over his shoulder at Paul and before he can say:  _ it doesn’t matter, you’ve fucked it _ , Paul tells him: “And if I’ve mucked it all up, I’ll love you from wherever you need me to be.” He deliberately stays exactly where he is; the space between them becoming just as much a part of them as the love they have for one another. “Is that okay?”

John just watches him; Paul’s known him long enough to take his silence as something good. Because they’ve always been better with music, because words have always failed them, John just nods, not trusting his voice to come out the right way. 

“Okay,” Paul says for him. “Okay, good.” Paul goes to the table and picks up the tea for them, knows which one is his because John knows how to make it for him. He stands next to John at the countertop handing off a mug to him. He sips at his own, watches John do the same, watches the warmth of it settle something deep in his bones. 

“I didn’t sleep with Brian,” John suddenly tells him. Paul decides to ignore the urge to tell him that isn’t the way he should say  _ I love you back _ , but he still must look perplexed, because John adds: “When you called me in Liverpool. I didn’t sleep with him.”

“Okay,” Paul offers. 

John goes a bit red, like he must have realized it was the wrong thing to say.. He looks down at the tea in his mug and shrugs. “I thought maybe you thought I did.” This is a minefield, Paul realizes. Of course he’d thought John had, but he doesn’t know what the right thing to say back is. Instead, he just shrugs back, means to waffle on his words a bit, but John speaks before he can say anything at all: “I think there must be something wrong with me.”

“Why would you --”

“I meant to,” John tells him honestly. “I meant to shag him, but then you called and I didn’t want to anymore.” Paul sighs heavily because he picks up what John means: he’d meant to do it to hurt him. Or to hurt himself. Paul realizes he doesn’t know which is worse. He wonders if Brian would have even let it happen. Or if he might have laid John down in a bed gently, gently kissed him on the forehead, and left him to sleep, they way he’d done to Paul all those years ago after George’s wedding. “I just want to make sure you’ve got it in your head,” John says; Paul just looks up at him, eyebrows knit together above wide, open eyes, so John explains: “That’s the sort of person you’ve said ‘I love you’ to.”

_ I love you when you think you don’t deserve it _ . Paul wants to say it again, but he realizes it doesn’t matter, because saying it twice won’t make it any more true than saying it once. Saying it twice won’t get it under John’s skin any more than saying it once. “Do you mean to talk me out of it?” he asks, as if the impossibility of it were obvious, or, at least as obvious to John as it felt to Paul. 

“Well, no,” John stammers 

“Good,” Paul tells him for the second time. Then, he goes out on a limb, acknowledges the fact that he’d never assured John that there was nothing wrong with him, and asks: “Do you like the thing you think is wrong with you?”

John goes red again and Paul thinks John might like to hit him, but then he must realize that Paul’s already seen him at his worst, he’s already seen him at his most exposed. He sips at his tea and even though it’s just a mumble, reluctant and perhaps a bit angry, he’s still honest and says: “No.”

“There’s something wrong with me too, you know,” Paul says, giving John a gentle nudge with his elbow. John glances at him suspiciously, then rolls his eyes, and before he can say anything about  _ perfect Paul McCartney _ , Paul tells him: “I don’t like it either.” John’s eyes soften just enough for Paul to know he’s got him back on his side, so he says: “I think I’d like to change it,” and hopes that John will want the same thing. 

“And how do you think you’d manage that?” John asks, carefully masking the fact that he means to ask that question inward. 

“I dunno,” Paul says, shrugging idly. “Figuring that out’s half the work, innit?”

Paul watches it dawn on John that that question doesn’t seem so daunting when it’s Paul next to him. He watches him shrug because it might just be too vulnerable a thing to acknowledge. He watches him take another sip of tea and hum something of agreement in the back of his throat.  _ Baby steps _ , Paul realizes. For the both of them. He realizes he’s thought that:  _ there’s something wrong with me _ , plenty of times, but he’s never said it out loud to another person. He’s glad he’s said it to John. 

He sips at his tea, sees John do the same out of the corner of his eye, then he feels John sidled up next to him, close enough that the sleeves of their shirts rub up against one another. He realizes that, to anyone else, it might look like he’ll leave John’s flat empty-handed. He’ll leave John’s flat just as he’d come: in love, single, and a bit terrified, but with John next to him, he feels united against something. He realizes that after Liverpool, with the love and acceptance of Jane and his family, and now here with John, that part of himself that had told him he’d always be alone and unloveable had been chipped away to what felt like next to nothing. He realizes that that  _ isn’t _ empty-handed. He thinks it might be fuller than he’s ever felt his whole life. 

“Music’s always helped me with the big questions,” he says, hoping the change of subject might feel casual, but John doesn’t let him get away with it. He looks at Paul, a wry grin on his face. He raises his eyebrows and Paul realizes John expects him to explain himself. “I’m ready to go back in the studio, that’s all,” he says, feeling like he has to defend himself, but John just laughs, shaking his head ruefully.

“Buttering me up to do a bit of work, are you?” John asks, hiding that shit-eating grin behind his tea.

Paul gives him another nudge, this one isn’t so gentle, and it nearly knocks John off-balance. “Come off it. Like you haven’t been dying to record your India stuff,” he accuses. 

John just shrugs, feigning humility, but still says: “I did write some good ones.”

“Yeah, I know you did,” Paul tells him. “And I wanna hear ‘em properly.” Paul realizes he wants John to hear  _ his _ songs properly, too. He’d written most of them for John, even if he hadn’t realized it yet. John takes a deep breath and Paul realizes that all those beautiful songs that John had written might be for him too. “George thinks we ought to record them on a little demo, or something. Bring them into the studio that way.”

John’s nodding before Paul’s even got all his words out. He must realize how eager he looks because he takes it down a bit and just says: “Sounds fun, yeah.”

Paul nods, then they look at one another, into one another, like they might have in India. Paul hears  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ in his head and he isn’t sure if it’s John’s voice or his own. He wants John to kiss him. He realizes he might feel fullest that way. But John doesn’t. Paul doesn’t lean in and take it for himself, either. He wonders when the next time they’ll kiss one another might be. With John looking into him, through him, he realizes that there’s a future between them where they’ll be able to kiss one another whenever they’d like to. It makes Paul smile before he means to. 

“What?” John asks, smiling right back. Paul just shrugs, because he doesn’t want to say it, but he realizes he might not even have to, because John blushes then shakes his head and pushes himself up off the counter and steps towards the sitting room. “Soft git,” he mutters fondly and Paul realizes that he’s meant to follow him. 

He sits down on the couch and watches John sit down cross-legged in front of the television, switch it on, and flip through the channels until he finds something that the two of them might be able to handle. Then, he’s up on the couch next to Paul and neither of them really watch what’s in front of them. But they don’t really look at one another either. It’s easy and quiet, the only way it can be with someone who’s known you for more than ten years. Somewhere after the first act of some film from the forties, John’s feet end up in Paul’s lap as he stretches out the length of the couch, his head up against the armrest, one hand dangling off the edge. 

They still don’t look at one another. 

They don’t even look at one another when Pete Shotton finally comes back (without coffees) and mutters something that sounds like: “I can’t keep up.” They don’t look at one another, but Paul hears John stifle a laugh, so he knows it’s okay that he’s smiling. 

\--

The next morning, Paul switches onto Radio Caroline in the car and listens to the rock music as loud as he can manage while still keeping his eyes on the road. London turns to countryside and he suddenly understands why they’d all moved out here. It goes quiet and calm, and the long wildgrass on either side of the road sways in a breeze that seems so sweet it makes Paul roll down his window to feel it against his skin. He finds something softer on the radio and lowers the volume until he feels like a young boy again, listening to music in the car with his Mum and Dad in the front seat, holding hands with one another across the leather bench.

He’s so calm by the time he gets to Kinfauns that the bungalow looks so warm and homely. He pulls into the drive and his is the first car. Ringo is out in the garden smoking a cigarette; he waves Paul closer. By the time Paul climbs out of his Aston Martin, Rich is holding out a lit cigarette to him. Paul mutters a quiet ‘thank you’ as they sidle up next to one another. 

They both want to say ‘I’m sorry’, but think the other should be able to do it first. Rings must decide to give up on all that because he reaches out and squeezes Paul’s shoulder and before either of them can think that that’s all the physical comfort that they can offer one another, Ringo pulls Paul in for a hug and he realizes that  _ not saying it _ feels just as good as  _ saying it _ when you’re next to someone who knows the truth anyway. 

“You alright?” Rich mutters into his hair. 

Burying his cheek down deeper into Ringo’s jacket, Paul says: “Yeah,” and he thinks he might actually mean it. Here, right now, he feels  _ alright _ . 

They pull away from one another, though it’s abundantly clear that they could stay here forever, and Ringo gives Paul’s cheek an affectionate tap. He looks him over, stands taller for being next to him and says: “I saw you on the telly last night.”

“Oh, Christ,” Paul mumbles, grimacing at the thought of his own face on that program. It isn’t the version of him he’d have liked Ringo to see. 

“You looked stronger than you think you did,” he says, needling right into the point straight off the bat. Paul sighs heavily, letting those words ease the tension at the back of his neck. He means to say ‘thank you’, before Rings adds: “I felt very proud to know you,” and it makes Paul wire his mouth shut. He nods his thanks, because that’s all he thinks he can manage. He feels Ringo squeeze at his arm again, but he can’t look at him, and Rings just lets him. He lets him keep his eyes down. “I hope you feel proud, too,” he says, and Paul just nods again, though, he knows he’ll just have to borrow some of Rich’s pride, rather than feel the warmth of his own.

“It’s hard to feel that way right now,” Paul confesses. Rich’s blue eyes go soft and sad, but he nods his understanding, so Paul supplies: “But I think I will,” and again, he thinks that might be true. Ringo nods again and Paul thinks he believes him. He realizes that that makes it easier to come to fruition. That people believed and hoped that this might be something he could look at happily one day. 

They finish their cigarettes quietly; something about George’s front garden keeps them calm. Something about being together. When he’s finished, Rich stubs out his cigarette then nods over his shoulder at George’s front door behind him. 

There’s music already playing inside, something off the record player. But what Paul mostly hears is John joking with Pattie in the living room. It’s exactly how it should all sound. It’s exactly how it had all been before. Paul feels twenty-two again: in love and happy and brimming with music. He realizes that he’ll get to feel that way again. He smiles at John across the sitting room and  _ realizes _ he’ll get to feel that way again. 

Pattie gasps as soon as she sees him -- that’s the only difference -- and she rushes over to him to give him a hug and a kiss, and then she drags him back towards the settee and sits him down so she can feed him some biscuits and a cup of tea, then makes some promise about staying out of their way, but Paul sort of wishes she’d just stay. She makes him feel the way Jane had. They all do. 

Then, they pull out their guitars and the room comes alive. 

John sings  _ Child of Nature _ , then Paul sings  _ Mother Nature’s Son _ and it feels like they’re passing something back and forth. Something familiar and warm, and if Paul closes his eyes, he’s back in his ashram with John sitting in front of him, close enough that their knees knock together if they move too much. If Paul closes, he can feel the way John had made him feel when he’d told him:  _ if there’s someone who doesn’t like you for being something new, they can fuck right off _ . 

John sings  _ I’m So Tired _ then Paul sings  _ Junk _ and he realizes that they’ve always been in tune with one another. Even when that meant they were feeling horrible. 

When they’ve finished, they listen back to some of it and something rich and exciting fills the room:  _ it’s good _ . Paul realizes that it doesn’t just make him feel like a Beatle again: adored, talented, exuberant; it mostly just makes him feel like himself: emotional, musical, and surrounded by people that love him. He wants to go into the studio tomorrow. He wants George Martin to see this stuff and record it all in one go. He looks around the room and realizes that George does too. John’s playing it coy, but he hasn’t been this excited by a record since 1964. Rings is still drumming out the beat on his knee, even though he’s just played the song ten minutes ago. It’s all electric. It’s all real, and it’s all made by them. 

In George’s living room, nothing feels impossible. Nothing feels as though it could be dragged down. For a moment, Paul forgets what’s brought him here. He forgets everything that’s happened to him after India. He feels just as he’d felt there: happy, balanced, and fucking invincible. 


	6. chapter six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, this one wrestled its way out of me a lot quicker than I thought it would, so here you go, a slightly unexpected update! 
> 
> I haven't even gotten around to replying to comments from my previous update, which I swear I will do, but since we're all here, I'll just say thank you!! They were all so wonderful and sweet and totally understanding about going a new direction. I hope you are and will enjoy this new version as much as you had the last!
> 
> As always, join me over on tumblr @orphanbeat!

He walks to EMI on the first day they’re scheduled to be in the studio. He hums one of his songs, going jittery with excitement. He’s smiling as he steps into the studio carpark, looking up into the sun, letting it warm him both inside and out. Then, he hears his name shouted to him and it isn’t a voice he recognizes. He can’t believe he’d missed it, but there are a few journalists waiting for him near the large entrance double doors. He nearly stops dead, but he figures that has to be what they want. 

So, he puts one foot in front of the other. It makes him think that he’s back out on that tarmac at the airport. His heart is in his throat as he watches them, recorders and notebooks out as they meet him halfway. There’s a microphone shoved in his face before he can even politely say ‘hello’. He slows to a stop and they all form a loose circle around him. It makes him want to bolt. It makes him want to shove them all aside and be in a room with his friends, putting all these feelings in a song somewhere. 

They all start to ask their first questions at the same time and it makes him feel small, it makes him feel like he can hardly understand them. Their voices overwhelm him, the way they sometimes would back in their old days -- too much fame and too much adoration too quickly. It scares him now the way it had scared him then. He’s just one person, how can so many people want a piece of him? He tries to take a step back, but just finds that there’s another recorder pressing up against the back of his collar. He wants to bat it off of him the way he might a bug. His skin crawls as if it were a bug too. 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, focusing on the sound of his own voice instead. “I’m sorry, you have to speak one at a time,” he tries, but all it does is make them step closer to him. He realizes he’s done nothing but try to assuage these people, he’s done nothing but try to be honest and open with them. There’s nothing he’d like to do more than tell them all to fuck off. 

He thinks he hears one of them ask if this is it, if this is the moment that the Beatle bubble bursts and it makes him feel sick. He thinks of the others inside and wonders if these wankers asked them the same thing, and if they had, would they realize that if it was, if the bubble was really bursting, that it was all Paul’s fault? He shakes his head and manages a simple: “No,” then a: “No, I  _ don’t _ ,” when they ask him to repeat himself, to repeat and  _ hear _ how arrogantly naive it was to answer that way.

Of course the bubble was bursting. People have hated them for years; but this would be the last straw. This would be the thing that everyone would point to and say:  _ I knew I hated them for a reason _ . 

“And what about the boycott in Kentucky?” one of them asks and it makes the rest of them go quiet. 

“What?” Paul asks sadly. It’s the first he’s hearing of it, but it makes sense and he knows exactly what they might be boycotting. He wants to make them say it. He wants them to hear how hateful they are, but he’s left reeling when he realizes they won’t hear it that way, they’ll just hear themselves as being right. 

“A radio station in Kentucky is already planning to boycott the new album,” the reporter explains. “You’re not afraid that might catch on? In America  _ and _ here in England?”

“I think…” he manages and he hates how bloody pathetic he sounds. “I think people should listen to the record before they decide they don’t like it.”

“Well,” another says smartly. “Suppose they don’t want to support you financially.”

“We don’t need their support,” Paul says, but he isn’t stupid, he knows that’s exactly how the entertainment business works. They know he’s caught on to that fact, too. He needs them to like him and the only way they’ll like him is if he’s square, manageable, heterosexual, so he corrects himself and says: “I haven’t got a comment.”

“You don’t?”

Paul takes a deep breath, wants to say:  _ fuck you, fucking everyone standing with you, fuck Kentucky, fuck rock and roll, fuck it all _ , so instead, he just shakes his head. He goes red with how pathetic he must look, folding in on himself, wishing he wasn’t the way that he was, wishing he’d never gone to Greece, or that he’d never met John at all. It makes him feel sick, that being so afraid might make him wish something so horrible. 

“You’re saying ‘no comment’?” another clarifies.

Paul nods in response; he tries to take a step towards the front steps of EMI. They don’t seem to let him through so he elbows by them and gives them words they can write in their bloody newspapers: “I’m saying ‘no comment’.”

They shout things at his back, he sees flashbulbs reflecting back at him in the studio windows and he only feels like he can breathe again once the front door falls shut behind him and he smells the familiar old dingy carpet in the lobby and coffee being brewed in the canteen down the hall. He blusters into Studio 2; the lads are already there. John’s at the piano, turned backwards on the stool, the others have pulled chairs up around him. Even George Martin is there, standing over the three of them, sipping at a cup of tea. 

“Well, there he is,” John says. He turns, grabbing at something next to him. When he looks back at Paul, he’s holding out a tea cup. Paul knows he’s meant to take it, but the love suddenly in his system makes him feel as though he’s about to short-circuit. It’s too foreignly opposing to what he’s just felt outside that he can hardly move. “Not like you to be late, Macca,” John continues, seemingly unaware of the flip-flopping going on inside of him. He stretches his arm out further towards him, the teacup shuddering slightly against its saucer, then must see how pale he’s gone, how breathless the whole thing has made him, because he narrows his eyes at him, his head cocked to the side, but he doesn’t ask:  _ are you alright? _ because he thinks the answer might be too private a thing. 

Paul can feel too many eyes on him, so he forces himself to move. He comes closer to his friends; their warmth makes him feel like a proper person again. He reaches out for his tea, pretends that it’s John’s way of touching him, of smoothing out his hair and caring for him. 

“Sorry,” Paul mutters, mostly to George Martin. Ringo stands and gives Paul’s shoulder a squeeze. He feels something come around them; it keeps them all inside and everything out. It makes everything other than the warm tea in his hands, the touch of old friends, and music dying to come out of all of them all turn blurry in their irrelevance. 

“I hear you’ve brought me a tape,” George Martin says and it makes the other three grin widely. 

Paul nods, then realizes that George is holding his hand out for him to shake. His handshake is warm and firm, exactly how it’s always been, then he clasps his other hand over Paul’s and holds onto him tight. It’s a vow of respect, of friendship, and of protection, as clear to him now as when Brian had done the same thing for him. 

“I hope you like it,” Paul placates back, feeling so cared for, it makes him go shy.

They all take their tea up to the listening booth and Geo plays the tape. George Martin listens to each song carefully. He goes through two cups of tea because he realizes he just keeps repeating himself:  _ good one, I like it, that one works _ … 

When the tape goes to static, it’s quiet and still; they’re all grown men, musically successful in their own right, but they still trust George with their lives in the studio. He scratches at his jaw, must feel all their eyes on him, because he looks around the room and then starts to smile. “That’s a lot of songs,” he says plainly.

Geo grins widely, looks to Paul and that smile grows. It’s infectious; Paul smiles back at him, before he realizes that it’s the most George has ever brought to an album and he feels something like pride swell up inside of him. He wants to build George’s songs into something special. He wants to do the same with his own, and John’s too. It all feels like it might be rising, going warm and happy. Smiling at George, he feels like he’s moving at the same time as all of his mates again. He smiles and realizes he can’t stop.

Music does that for all of them. He can sense that same feeling rising in all of them, too. He looks at John and he’s smiling and it makes it all go right, it makes it all feel like the beginning of something. Paul forgets about the people in Kentucky who are already planning to ignore the album without having heard anything off of it. He forgets about the people who haven’t  _ said it _ yet, but they hate him too much to spend money on the record too. Somewhere deep down, he must know they still exist, but he doesn’t care for them. They don’t matter. Not when he has this much music inside of him. 

They do one of John’s first:  _ Revolution _ . It’s sweet and angry all at once and it makes Paul feel filled with some kind of resolution. It curls around him and feels like a safety net coming up around him. He doesn’t feel afraid, standing across a microphone from George, watching John sing into another. He feels active and impactful. He feels his voice, his hands, he feels them all making a difference. And it’s John, guiding them all to this place. 

Paul wants to take a step towards him, wants John to do the same so that they meet somewhere in the middle and kiss one another. He wants to feel John’s music inside of him, he wants John to feel his too, until they build something different and beautiful between the two of them. 

Paul thinks this might be the best way to be saying:  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ . He thinks this must be the only way to get through to John in a way that he’ll understand and cherish. There’s always been truth in their music -- something pure and loving -- so there’s no room for John to confuse it. To lose where love ends and fear begins. He realizes John  _ is _ the moon. He’s some shining thing, constantly revolving around him, pushing and pulling on anything he can get his hands on. And Paul  _ is _ the wave: the thing that keeps coming back and lapping John up until he feels so calmed by crisp salt water. 

They finish a take and Paul takes a look at each of them. He wants to ask:  _ do you feel that? _ But he realizes he doesn’t have to because they’re all looking back at him and they’re silently asking him the same thing. There’s a resounding ‘yes’ around them all; it feels strong and untouchable, the way it all had after they’d hit number one for the first time. 

He feels so contented, so thrust backward in time, that when John joins him in the canteen and says: “You’re alright, then?” he feels genuinely less steady on his feet. He doesn’t ask:  _ what do you mean? _ but John must hear it anyway, because he tacks on: “I thought you were in a bit of a mood this morning.” He watches John pour himself some coffee

“Oh,” Paul manages, remembering just how he’d started his day. He suddenly wonders if those reporters were still out there, waiting for him, wondering if he’d come up with something to say yet. “I think I was,” he allows. 

He feels John’s eyes on him, so he looks up and he’s right, John’s looking him over like an older brother who’s just pulled him out of a fight, scanning for anything broken. “What happened?” he asks, as gently as he can, though Paul can tell he really means:  _ who hurt you? _

“Were there journos outside when you lot came in?” Paul asks him and he watches John’s expression harden. 

“There were, yeah,” he says. He shakes his head and must find that he has to look away. Paul thinks he might be of the mind to walk out there right now and hit whoever was brave enough to stick around. “What did they say to you?” he demands and Paul realizes he’s right. John’s vibrating with energy. It reminds Paul of their Hamburg days, except they aren’t kids anymore, and Paul  _ knows _ , he knows that if he lets John go out there, he’ll do or say something he regrets. “No mind,” Paul says, but John shakes his head at him again. “It doesn’t matter,” he tries again, tugging at John’s sleeve. “It turned out fine, we’ve had a good day.”

“You shouldn’t let them speak to you that way --”

“What am I meant to do, John?” Paul says over him. “I’ve made my bed,” he says and watches the way John retreats back into himself. He hadn’t meant to hurt him with it, he’d just used John’s words because he’d been  _ right _ . So early on, John had been right. This was the bed that Paul had made for himself, and it would continue to be so until the hounds outside decided they’d taken enough from him. 

“I don’t know,” John allows. He offers Paul something of an apologetic smile, then he looks down at the way that Paul’s still tugging at the cuff of his shirt. He must miss the easiness of how they’d once touched each other. He seems to melt into it slightly. It feels like a secret, to be touching one another like this, but Paul realizes that they’re still touching all the same. 

“I’d have quite liked it quiet,” he confesses. John nods, but he keeps his eyes down in his cup of coffee. Paul hasn’t got the time to tell him what they’ve both already said:  _ but I’ve made my bed _ , because there’s a pair of high heels scuffing the linoleum floor somewhere behind them and neither of them are brave enough to hold still where they are. Paul pulls his hand away from John quicker than he realizes how much it hurts to have done so. But John does the same too. He grabs at some sugar and busies himself with something until he can get the  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ ’s out of his eyes. 

Then, he glances over his shoulder at whoever’s just come in and offers them a smile. Paul’s finally able to do the same. It’s one of the secretaries. She nods at them both, but Paul can see how stilted she’s gone. Before she takes a step towards the vending machine, she glances down at their hands, the space between them as damning as the lack of it. 

“Hello,” she says to them politely. 

“Hello,” John manages back. 

Paul wants to say something too, but he can’t, and he realizes that he’s shaking with it. John grabs one of the wrapped biscuits and mutters something about getting back to work. Paul knows he’s meant to follow him, but he’s just gone stock-still. If he moves an inch, he thinks he’ll give himself away. He goes cold with it: the realization that he’s just been alone in a room with a man and everybody’s filled their own heads with what they think has happened inside of it. He feels the secretary stealing glances in their direction and he goes red with it, how vile it is that she can’t imagine anything innocent, anything loving.

_ I just love him! _ Paul wants to shout it until she believes him. He loves the same way she loves. It shouldn’t frighten her or disgust her or titillate her.  _ Stop looking at me, I just love him! _

“C’mon, Paul,” John suddenly says from the doorway and he sounds strong enough for the both of them. Paul looks up at him and John stands up a little taller and says: “We’ve got a record to make,” like it doesn’t matter who says or thinks what: Beatles would be Beatles and  _ you’d _ put a million pounds in their pockets, no matter who they liked to kiss. 

\--

He must have asked for it, but he doesn’t remember doing so; either way, John walks home to Cavendish at the end of the night. They’re still buzzing. Paul realizes that he and John had been chatting as they walked down that long skinny hallway towards the main entrance and simply neither had wanted to stop, so John had just followed him right out the door, right past his car sat out in the car park and deeper into St. John’s Wood. 

“Oh,” John says as Paul pulls to a stop in front of his gate, as though he’s just realized how far he’s come. He stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets and laughs meekly. “You’re always closer than I think you are,” he mumbles. He toes at cracks in the sidewalk and then says: “I probably shouldn’t leave the car overnight --”

They both know it doesn’t matter, so Paul says: “Would you like to come in?” before John even has the proper chance to finish. It looks as though he might say no, so to stave off the inevitable, Paul adds: “For a drink or summat.”

“Erm…” John mutters. He itches at something imaginary at the back of his neck. He glances back at Paul and he looks trapped between two things: something he wants and something he knows isn’t good for him. He must realize he hasn’t got a hope in hell to turn down something he wants, so he meets himself halfway. He says: “Some tea, maybe.”

Things had gone so easy between them in the studio, Paul had forgotten that it could still be hard for John to be with him. He realizes that John has probably been wondering when the next time they might kiss one another might be too, though he might be hoping to put as much time as possible between now and then. Paul feels pressed to say:  _ I love you _ , as if that might fix everything, as if that was the same thing as saying:  _ don’t be afraid _ . 

“Okay,” is all he says because the last thing he wants is to make John feel that he’s trying to make him do something he doesn’t want to do. “A cuppa, and then I can take you to pick up your car.”

John nods, deciding that this must be safe territory, then he smiles. He steps in through the gate when Paul pushes it open for him and Paul steps in after him. As he starts to shut it after them, he glances across the road and catches the eye of a woman across the street. She looks dressed for a night out, slightly tired and drunk, so she probably isn’t at her best in terms of hiding her facial expressions. She’s slowed her pace slightly and Paul gets the distinct feeling that she’s been watching them for a while now. 

He feels his heart jump into his throat; he realizes what this must look like because it looks exactly like what he’d hoped it would be. It looks as though he’s just brought John home, alone, just the two of them.The girl snickers when she realizes she’s been caught looking, then she diverts her eyes down to the cobblestones in front of her and picks up the pace. Her hands dug deep into her pockets, her quick feet clack too loudly down the street. 

Paul locks the gate, but it suddenly doesn’t feel like there’s enough between him and the people on the other side, the people that look at him, the people that will always want an explanation from him. By the time he heads towards the house, John’s already at the front door. He tries the knob and finds it open. He chuckles and looks over his shoulder at Paul and says: “You really ought to lock your front door, Macca.”

Paul just shrugs, tries to smile back, but he’s just filled with nerves. “I figure if they’ve made it past the gate, they’re not gonna be stopped by the front door.” John just shakes his head, so as they step inside, Paul jibes: “Am I meant to believe that you’ve always locked your front door?”

They’re close enough that John can jab him in the ribs with his elbow. “The front door at Kenwood was also half a mile off the road.” He leads Paul to his own kitchen, as if this is where he’s most comfortable, as if the whole place belongs to him. And Paul thinks it might; he thinks everything might because he’d follow John anywhere. 

“And the new flat?” Paul asks as he flicks the lights on in the kitchen. 

Once John’s up against the counter, waiting for Paul to collect the kettle and tea bags, he gives Paul a coy smile and adds: “I’ve got too many secrets at the new flat to let just anybody in, you know.” Paul isn’t sure he knows what he means by it. He knows it must just be a joke, but he’s left wondering what John had been up to before India. If he’d had Brian over, or another man that Paul wasn’t even aware of. 

“Right,” he mumbles lightly, giving John a smile and eye roll for good measure. “I forgot you were so bloody mysterious.”

John smiles, then he turns at the waist, snatches the tea bags from Paul’s hands to inspect them. He sniffs one of them; it must be up to his standard because he grabs himself a cup and drops it inside. Paul smiles to himself; he isn’t sure why it’s made him so happy. He thinks it must just feel domestic. If they were any happier, they’d be in Greece. If Paul had just kept quiet, they might have more than what they have now. Paul can see it: the way John might have hopped up on the counter, opened his legs just enough for Paul to slot himself between them. If Paul had been quiet, John might wrap his legs around him, pull him close enough to kiss. But he doesn’t. So, then, all Paul can think about is the woman who’d seen them come here, alone, at nearly three in the morning. She’d hazard a guess at what was happening behind closed doors, just like John had told him she would. She, and everyone like her, would never let them love one another quietly. 

He needs a drink. He wishes John would join him. 

Once the water’s on the boil, Paul steps towards his liquor cabinet. He can feel John’s eyes on him as he goes. He grabs a bottle of whiskey and sets it down on the counter next to his own tea cup. 

He glances at John, still wishing he would join him. 

John’s eyes flicker up from the amber bottle of whiskey, up to Paul’s and he looks for sorry for something. Paul feels something hot, like embarrassment, fill him up. He snatches the bottle off the counter, unscrews the cap with less grace than he ought to and says: “It always puts me to sleep.”

John nods. He knows,  _ of course,  _ he knows.

“I’d normally join you,” he says, by-way of an apology. He shrugs when Paul looks at him and he looks like he might be embarrassed about something too. “I’m doing a sort of week-on-week-off type thing.”

Paul narrows his eyes at him. “Off drink?”

John shrugs again and Paul realizes he’d been right: John  _ is _ embarrassed. “It’s a thing me and Cyn wanted to try,” he says, meaning to sound casual and dismissive, but Paul realizes that if he were being casual about this, he’d just join him and put a shot of whiskey in his tea. “I was drinking too much anyway.”

“When did that start?” Paul asks, going hot under the collar. He feels suddenly lesser, weaker, and he knows it isn’t John’s intention, but he feels cold and judged for turning to something that had always helped the both of them through the shit times. 

“Just,” John allows. 

Paul nods and says: “Well, that’s good,” because he knows he should. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were…” He stammers slightly when he offers: “I don’t have to --...” Before he realizes he’d still really like to. “D’you mind if I still have some?”

“No, no,” John immediately answers. “It’s none of that,” he says. “I reckon I’ll break my own rule before the weekend.” He gives Paul a reassuring nod. “Go ahead.”

“Right,” Paul mumbles. He feels so cornered that he wants to just bowl through. He wants to show John that he’s still drinking  _ precisely because _ he hasn’t got a drinking problem. He decides to have John elaborate. “Cyn thinks she drinks too much, then?”

John laughs and it chips something away. It almost makes Paul genuinely smile back. “Nah,” John tells him honestly. “She’s mostly doing it out of solidarity, I think.”

“Ah,” Paul concludes. “So,  _ she _ thinks you drink too much.”

“Yes,” John says pointedly and it brings it all back down, it makes it all go serious. “I never thought it was so bad, but she says it made me different.” Paul sighs heavily. He reckons he’s probably said the same thing. “And she’s right, you know.” John shrugs. “I thought it was helping, you know, making things easier, or whatever, but I think it was just making me tired.”

“You feel better without it?” Paul ventures. 

“It’s only been a week,” John says bashfully. “So,  _ no _ ,” he answers. “But I reckon it will once I get used to it.”

“Your Irish ancestors are rolling in their graves,” Paul says to lighten the mood.

John laughs and again, it changes the room. He  _ always _ changes the room. He nods, allowing that to be true, then admits: “They were rolling long before I decided to quit the whiskey.”

“That’s true,” Paul agrees. 

He thinks of them in bed together and realizes that’s exactly what John had meant. He reckons he’s quite lucky to have been born to his father; he knows there are others: aunties, cousins, uncles, who might never speak to him again. He wonders who John would lose if he’d done what Paul had hoped he would. Would Mimi still speak to him if she found out about him? Would she still be glad to have brought him into her home, raised him like her own. He realizes he doesn’t know the answer. John doesn’t either. It makes him feel as though it’s the two of them against the world. Kept safe and quiet here in the privacy of his kitchen. 

He wants to say  _ I love you _ , for no other reason than it being true. 

He wants to say:  _ You’re here and I love you. _

“And,” John suddenly says, his voice going soft and weak. His cheeks go slightly red. “You know that bit you said about wanting to change the thing I didn’t like?” Paul feels something go light in his chest. He nods because he doesn’t think he can manage words. “Well…” John says, going redder, going quieter. “I’d like to put my money where my mouth is, as it were. For once.”

Paul swallows hard. He nods and wonders how he’ll ever be able to say:  _ I’m proud of you _ in a way that encapsulates everything he’s feeling. “I think that’s very big of you,” is what he comes up with. It comes out strangled, so John must know there’s so much more he means to say. Except he doesn’t press for it; he knows they’ll say it all properly to one another one day. 

“Thanks,” he says, before they’re both saved by kettle’s whistle.

Paul grabs for the kettle and they’re both torn out of this place they’ve found with one another, but it doesn’t scare them, it doesn’t make them wonder if they’ll ever find their way back here. He pours the steaming water into John’s cup, watches him cling to the porcelain with both hands, taking in its warmth. Paul does the same and as he takes his first sip, he feels the tea do exactly what it’s meant to. It warms every part of him. It feels safe as a childhood home. 

Paul heads off to the sitting room and it’s John’s turn to follow him. Paul lets him have the green velvet chair he likes so much. Paul watches him sink right into it. He realizes that just enough about them hasn’t changed. He sees them just as they were when they were twenty-four. Maybe even younger because he sees John happy; he sees John happy wth Cyn. 

“So,” Paul starts, hiding behind his cup of tea. “Is this the beginning of you and Cyn working it out, then?”

John seems to freeze. He goes still, then absolutely relaxed. He laughs and says: “No,” shaking his head. “God, no.”

“Oh --”

Still shaking his head, John ambiguously says: “We’re not exactly one another’s type.” Paul furrows his brow at him, so John adds: “Romantically, at least.”

“That’s a bit sad, isn’t it?” Paul ventures. He thinks of Jane and realizes that they aren’t one another’s types either. 

John shrugs, though he looks like he might want to say ‘yes’. But instead, he just mumbles: “Dunno.” He sips at his tea and says: “For Jools, maybe.” Paul nods sadly. “But I reckon we’ll be better for him as friends, anyroad.” Paul hums in agreement. “She’s met somebody new,” John tells him and it nearly forces the air right out of him. John must see it because he gets this little amused grin on his face and starts to nod. “He’s alright,” John continues. “A bit boring, but maybe that’s the sort of thing she’s looking for after what I put her through.”

“Wow,” Paul manages. “I had no idea. Does Jools like him?”

“They haven’t met yet,” John explains. “It’s not that serious. Or, so she says.”

“But she likes him?” Paul asks, suddenly warmed by how happy hearing about his friends’ contentment has made him. John nods, then digs into his pocket for his carton of cigarettes. He leans back in the velvet chair as he takes his first drag and Paul realizes he’s actually happy about this too, he isn’t just saying it. 

But the room falls quiet and Paul realizes it’s because he’s supposed to ask John about his lovelife now. In a normal conversation, the next question would be if John was spoken for too, except he knows he isn’t, except he knows that John put all of his eggs in one basket on Lesbos. 

“You know,” John says softly. “She asked me if I was seeing anybody too, and when I told her no, she asked me what I was looking for, and I realized that Cyn might have been the odd-one-out in terms of who I’ve liked and --...” He shrugs helplessly when he realizes he can’t or doesn’t want to explain this the way he ought to. “I dunno…” Paul keeps still; he’ll let John abort this or push through at his own speed. He only nods reassuringly, though he doesn’t know what John means. 

He thinks of Stuart and his art; art had been what had drawn John to Cyn in the first place. He thinks of Brian and his strong kindness and realizes that John had always loved Cynthia’s quiet strength. He thinks of himself and has to wonder what it is that John loves about him. Except his mind goes elsewhere. With Stuart, Brian, and Cynthia in his head, he suddenly,  _ pointedly _ , realizes what John must mean. She’s the only  _ woman _ he’s ever fallen in love with. 

“ _ Oh _ ,” Paul says before he realizes he’d meant to keep that epiphany to himself. John swallows hard, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He looks afraid and regretful and Paul thinks he ought to just pretend they both haven’t had the same thought at the same time. 

“I’m talking shite,” John mumbles. He downs the rest of his tea and lifts himself up off the chair, heading back towards the kitchen. Paul knows he should follow him, but he can’t bring himself to move.

He isn’t sure what it is that John’s just meant to tell him; all he knows is that it hadn’t gone the way John had thought it might. It hadn’t been as unthreatening as he’d thought it would be. Paul realizes that John hadn’t been ready to say it. He hears John rinsing out his cup, setting it down in the sink, but then he doesn’t come back into the sitting room. Paul just wants him to come back to the sitting room. 

If he’d just said the right thing, John would still be here. If he’d just said the right thing, if he hadn’t floundered, John would feel like he could actually speak to him. It’s  _ always _ John first; it’s always John saying it first and Paul never saying the right thing back. He just want to say the right thing back. 

“Johnny,” he says, standing himself up from the sofa. He stands so quickly, he nearly tips his tea cup on its side as he sets it down on the coffee table. “John?” he tries again when John doesn’t answer. 

John’s got his back to him when he stops in the doorway to the kitchen. John’s heard him; he glances over his shoulder at Paul and smiles meekly. Then, he gestures towards the telephone and says: “Mike’s left you a message.”

“What?” Paul manages because he realizes he’s missed his chance. 

John turns on his heel and picks up the slip of paper that Rose has left for him. He steps towards Paul, squinting down at what it says. He’s got his glasses on, but Rose’s writing is illegible to anyone other than Paul. Purposefully, so. He chuckles and says: “I haven’t got a clue what he’s saying, though.” John holds it out to him. Paul doesn’t take it. Instead, he just watches him, but John deliberately won’t take his eyes off the bit of paper. He doesn’t want to let Paul in any further than he already has. “Go on,” John mutters, shoving the paper into Paul’s palm. Paul’s got no choice to take it. 

As soon as he does, John slips past him. 

Scanning the message, Paul’s eyes go wide. “Fuck,” he hisses. 

Behind him, John stops dead. He turns back towards Paul before Paul can realize he’d been heading towards the front door. “What is it?” he asks. 

Paul sighs, exasperated, and drops his forehead into his hand. “It’s his wedding,” he mutters. “He’s reminding me. I bloody forgot,” he says and it hurts to admit that, but it’s the truth. He’s been home, he’s spoken to Michael, but he’d been so wrapped up in himself, in his own bullshit life, that he’d forgotten about the happiest day of his brother’s life. 

“When is it?” John asks gently. 

“Next weekend,” he manages. John’s closer to him than he thought he’d be. “I’ve got to write a speech.”

“Well,” John says gently. He sets his hand down on Paul’s shoulder. “Good thing you’re a writer.” Paul rolls his eyes. “You’ll get it done, it’s alright.” Paul looks up at him and realizes that John hasn’t looked at anything but him. “We’ll put down the drums, or something. Let you go home early.”

Paul nods, then reveals another source of anxiety. “I haven’t got a date anymore,” he admits. 

The weight of it all hits him:  _ how much _ things have changed, and how quickly. He’d been happy and in love and straight and  _ normal _ when Mike had asked him to be best man. Maybe it had been all some ruse, maybe he was healthier and more honest now, but it still hurts, to remember the things he had that he doesn’t have anymore. 

John just shrugs and says: “You could go with a friend,” as if it were the easiest thing to do. 

“What, like you?” Paul asks. 

John goes red and Paul realizes he’d meant someone else, Jane still, probably. Instead of embarrassing him, he just says: “Whoever.”

But Paul won’t let out that easy. “You know Mike,” he says. “You know my family.”

“Your family knows  _ me _ ,” John answers. “And they hardly like what they see.”

“I don’t care,” Paul says petulantly. John opens his mouth to say something, to fight back, so Paul says: “Nobody will think it’s anything improper,” and it makes John go red. “You could take the chance to visit Mimi.”

Sighing, John looks up at him, searching for something: the answer, maybe. Then, he asks: “You’d like me to go?” Paul just nods. He takes a deep breath and Paul breathes deeply with him, feeling as though he was standing on the head of a pin. “Alright,” John allows. “You’re right,” he continues. “I should see Mimi.”

Paul wants to kiss him. He wants to hug him, bury his nose into the crook of his neck and never let go. He feels safer when it’s John next to him. He wants John to tell him he loves him again, so he can tell him he loves him back with everything he has. 

“Thank you, John,” is all he manages instead. 

John nods back, then Paul feels his fingers down at his wrist. John takes a deep breath, then his hand is gone and he’s headed back into the sitting room. He isn’t leaving, Paul realizes. That means something. He actually stays the night at Cavendish. They fall asleep together on the couch in front of the television, but Paul thinks John’s done it on purpose. 

\--

Paul wakes up to the smell of brewed coffee and John humming something by The Temptations in the kitchen. He rolls himself out of the crevice of the couch, onto his side, and sees that John’s brought a mug in for him already. Smiling, he swings his feet off the cushions and sits himself up. He stretches the sleep out of his shoulder blades and John must hear him because he pokes his head into the sitting room. He beams at Paul and then nods towards the mug on the table. 

“The coffee might still even be hot,” he says. Then, mutters: “Sleeping Beauty,” as he steps back into the kitchen. 

“Are you making breakfast?” Paul calls after him. 

John balks a laugh back, loud enough that Paul can hear. “Don’t get too excited,” he shouts back, so Paul grabs his coffee and strides towards the kitchen. By the time he gets there, John’s scraping something across some toast. He turns to Paul and hands off one of the slices. “It’s just a bit of jam.”

“Oh,” Paul says, batting his lashes the way he knows always makes John laugh. “My favourite.”

John rolls his eyes good-naturedly then sits down at the table. Paul joins him. 

Around a mouthful of toast, Paul observes: “Since when do you wake up before me?”

“Since you kept kicking me, putting your socked toes in my mouth,” John pokes back. 

“I didn’t!” Paul defends, but he laughs all the same. 

John just shrugs playfully. He turns his attention to his own breakfast. Paul watches him, can’t seem to take his eyes off his hands. They look so delicate, shaking crumbs off his fingertips, tracing light, dainty lines along the rim of his coffee mug. Paul takes a deep breath. It fills his lungs all the way up. He realizes it’s because he still wants to say  _ I love you _ , for no reason, and the thought doesn’t scare him. 

John wears one of Paul’s shirts to the studio and Paul quite likes it on him. He has half a mind to let him keep it. Mostly, he thinks he likes the idea of John taking and using his things as if they were his own. If he keeps his eyes on just John, nowhere else, all he can think, seeing him in his clothing, is: you belong with me. John must be able to feel Paul’s eyes on him; they keep catching one another’s eye over their mics. He smiles, like he knows exactly what Paul’s thinking, like he knows exactly where he belongs, too.

Paul forgets that there are reporters to be afraid of, men and women who might stare. He forgets that he’s lost his mother, lost Tara. All he feels is how connected he is with the people around him. 

Having John fall asleep next to him on the couch, it feels as though it had reset something. He can’t believe that he’s slept alone more often than not the last few weeks. It had seemed so simple a thing, so familiar and right that he hadn’t even thought to question it.

Sleeping alone is strange. He hasn’t done it since he was eighteen years old, not really. A few nights here and there, when they were lucky enough to stay at Astrid’s during their Hamburg days, or tour dates where they’d been too exhausted to get lucky. It isn’t a part of his make-up, sleeping alone. He feels stranded by something. Things go too dark and too quiet. Paul has half a mind to call Jane and have her spend the night, but he supposes that this is the sort of thing that starting anew is all about.

He wonders how John minds sleeping alone. He imagines he’s even more neurotic about it. John fits into bed with whoever he’s with. He touches them, always, grounding himself in the warm presence of a person who loves him next to him, rather than just the mattress.

Of course, it isn’t Jane that Paul wants to call. Of course, it’s John.

Seeing one another over microphones suddenly doesn’t feel enough. Paul itches for more. Paul watches John arrive at work in his own clothing and it just doesn’t sit right with him. He wants to put him in something that doesn’t quite fit him right, something that hangs in the right places.

Paul thinks it must be obvious that he wants something from him because at the end of the week, John says to him: “Ey, listen,” and he sounds a little nervous about it, like a schoolboy. He shoulders into his jacket, always giving his hands something to do so he can keep his eyes elsewhere. Paul just watches him. “Cyn’s got to take my car for a few days. She’s taking Jools up to Liverpool to visit her sister.” Finally, John looks up at him and Paul just nods, urging him to continue. “Do you think you could nip ‘round in the morning on Monday? Drive me in?”

Paul smiles; it isn’t exactly what he wants, it doesn’t  _ exactly _ assuage his disdain for sleeping alone, but he nods anyway. Because he realizes he’ll be able to look at John without anybody else staring in, too. “Sure,” he answers easily and John seems to brighten up. “I’ll bring breakfast.”

\--

John’s out on the front steps of his flat by the time Paul comes around to pick him up. He’s smoking a cigarette, his guitar case haphazardly at his feet. He stands as Paul’s car turns into the garden, tosses his jacket over his shoulder and trudges towards the passenger side. He looks exhausted. The shirt he’s wearing looks slightly rumpled, like it hasn’t been washed, or perhaps that he’s slept in it.

He tosses his guitar into the backseat; the callousness of it makes him flinch. It’s something he must have gotten from his mother, but he tells John: “You’ll break it if you’re not careful,” as he climbs in next to Paul. John just shrugs in response, the truth of the matter obvious:  _ I’ll just buy myself another. _ He sinks deeper into the seat, taking long, harsh drags of his cigarette. Paul feels as though he’s back in Liverpool. John feels young and angry and wiley next to him in a way that he hasn’t in years.

The car goes quiet. In that sort of vibrating, electric way and Paul realizes the only way to cause a spark is to just stick a fork in the whole thing, so he quite brazenly says: “Er…” John turns even closer to the window. “Pardon me for asking,” he says, “but what’s got you so twisted?”

John sighs pointedly. Then, through gritted teeth, he says: “Can we just go to work? Please?”

Paul huffs out his annoyance. He’d forgotten how hapless John was when he was like this. John had gone soft. The Summer of Love had changed him in a way it hadn’t changed all the others. It had opened him up beyond the roguish exterior he’d been building since he was twelve years old. It had opened John up entirely, exposing every beautiful part of him that he’d quickly assumed no one would want to see.

He puts his car in reverse, then drops the paper bag he’d picked up from the bakery nearby into John’s lap. John looks down at it, then back at Paul as he backs down the drive. Paul can feel his eyes on along his jawline, the ridge of his nose, as he’s turned ‘round, enough to see out the back window. There’s a silent ‘thank you’ somewhere around him, but John doesn’t put words to it, so Paul adds: “There’s coffee there too, you know.”

As he swings out onto the street and twists back forward, he sees that John’s shoulders have dropped away from his ears. He reaches out for the coffees between them, hands off the one he knows is meant for Paul, then smiles meekly once Paul’s finally able to glance away from the road ahead of them.

“We had a bit of a row,” John finally explains, meaning Cynthia. They’re only two minutes away from the studio. Paul knows a good strategy when he sees one. He sighs heavily and nods. “They were meant to stay the night, head up early this morning, but they took off. Got there last night.”

Paul sighs again, but this time, he makes it all sound a bit softer, a bit more sensitive. “You’ve heard from them? They’re safe.”

“Yeah,” John mumbles.

“What was it about?” Paul asks gently.

John huffs out a bitter laugh. “She wants us to see a psychologist.” Paul sits up a little straighter. Something about doctors, hospitals, they’ve always made him jumpy. “You know, one of those family ones. They’re supposed to help couples through a divorce, make sure everybody’s happy, or whatever.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said it was all shite!” John immediately pokes back. “ _ Nobody’s _ happy about a divorce.”

“No,” Paul agrees quietly.

“I don’t know,” John mutters sullenly. Paul chances a look towards him and sees that he’s got his hands in his laps, fidgeting, picking at bits of his fingernails. Paul realizes that John knows he’s wrong. And being wrong  _ frightens _ him. It frightens Paul too. The thought of someone messing about with your emotional relationships. It had the potential to reveal too much. He realizes again:  _ there’s something wrong with me _ , but the thought of being shown what exactly that thing is makes it difficult to breathe. “If I did it, it’d be for the kid, you know.”

Paul feels something crack inside him. A sort of dread pours out through him, from somewhere deep in his chest, out to the tips of his fingers. It makes him feel hot. It makes him tap out the beat to the song on the radio against his steering wheel. He hasn’t got the words, because he realizes he wants to call the whole thing: brave, foolish, selfless, dangerous; he isn’t sure which John would like to hear.

“I don’t want to be the Dad that just fucks off,” John confesses, and there’s a history behind it all, one that only exists between John and the people he cares enough about to trust. He takes a deep breath and the hatred and bitterness and desperation that John feels towards his own father feels so heavy that there might as well be a third man in the car with them: Freddie Lennon, hanging over his son even though he’d long decided to leave him on his own. “But if not being that sort of man means I have to --…” Paul holds his breath. John could mean to say a number of things: come out; confront his own torn up ideas of what a family is; admit to being a liar and a cheat; seek help for the way his own brain seems to hate him. “I don’t know,” he whispers, because Paul realizes he means all of those things at once. It swirls around them both and Paul understands why neither of them can put any words to it.

Instead of trying, instead of getting it wrong, Paul just reaches out for his hand. He locks his fingers through John’s and gives him a gentle squeeze. For a moment, John doesn’t do anything back. Then, he heaves a shaky breath and presses his palm deeper against Paul’s. When he decides he’s given in, he goes  _ all in _ , he wraps his other hand around Paul’s too tugs it into his lap as though it was something he could keep forever, something that could keep him forever safe.

“I know I have to do it,” John says once they’re in the studio car park. His seatbelt halfway off, Paul freezes where he is. He watches John reach for his own seatbelt too, watches him come to terms with what he’s just said. He looks to Paul and they both hold there. Something courses through them both, the way it had when they’d done acid with one another, but something about this feels more real, more natural – truer and purer in a way that neither of them ever thought they could get to.

“There’s something wrong with me,” John says, repeating Paul’s words back to him. “I’d like to change it.”


	7. chapter seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suspend your disbelief with me and pretend that Mike had a secular wedding in his Dad’s backyard. I wrote this thinking about the reception which was 100% held at Jim’s place, but forgot that the ceremony itself would have been in a church somewhere? I’m keeping it all in one location to keep things easier on myself. 
> 
> Also, I don’t know shit about UK geography lmao I thought Mimi lived up north even after she moved away from Liverpool? Turns out Dorset is south of London. Whoops. I’m gonna just keep pretending that I never learned that and that she’s still up somewhere close to Liverpool. 
> 
> Writing scenes with both George and George Martin in them are the worst, I'm swear I'll never do it again lmao

“And what about Wednesday?” George Martin asks them as they’re up in the recording booth with some tea to wind down after the day’s recording. It’s been a long week; another sits ahead of them. They’ve got one of John’s songs in the can, one of Geo’s will be up next. George Martin glances up from the wee notebook in his hands; his holy grail, the studio’s schedule, expecting an answer. 

“Whenever,” Ringo offers with a casual shrug. Paul nods in agreement. 

“Er,” John says from behind his tea. All eyes are on him suddenly and he looks as though he’s feeling that. “I could do after six, then,” he offers. George Martin glances back down at the drafted schedule he’s made in front of him and tsks quietly. It’s later than anyone would like to start. It’s later than anyone had been expecting him to say. He must feel that too because he stammers out an explanation without realizing he doesn’t have to. “I’ve got a thing,” he says vaguely. That doesn’t divert anybody’s attention, it actually just brings it down on him more. He goes red with it and decides that discomfort has always made people stop looking at him. “I’ve got a  _ divorce thing _ ,” he clarifies and it does exactly what he’d intended it to do. Knowing one another since they were kids be damned, they’re all English enough to politely look away, nodding, and grumbling their understanding. 

Except Paul doesn’t. It feels like something more than that, so he doesn’t look away. Content with everybody’s eyes averted, John stops scanning the room when he lands on Paul. He looks embarrassed caught in a lie and Paul realizes it hasn’t just got to do with meeting up with a few lawyers in some horrible boardroom somewhere. It’s worse than that; it’s got John’s nerves shot. 

John looks away first and Paul realizes that that must mean it has to be one of those sessions with the psychologist he’s agreed to. It’s the only thing that would make John look away first. 

“Well, we should use as much time as we can,” George Martin muses. Paul hardly hears him. The voices around him have gone soft and tinny. He just wishes John would look back at him so he could see that it was all going to be alright. “So, why don’t we start at two in the afternoon, as we would, and we’ll do some bass and drums.” Ringo must agree to that because George presses: “Paul?” Again, when Paul doesn’t look at him. “Paul?”

“Sorry?” Paul mutters, he looks away from John, finally, and back to the lads in front of him. 

“We’ll start at two,” George repeats, except this time, it sounds less like a question and more like a statement. All Paul can do is nod. 

“And we’re gonna do my  _ Guitar _ one next week, then?” Geo ventures carefully. 

“Yeah,” John answers. George looks to Paul for his confirmation. Paul nods, but something turns over in his stomach, because he hates the relief on George’s face, he hates that it borderlines on gratitude. He realizes how long he’s made George fight for the scraps, how strong his songs are on the demo they’d brought in with them. He realizes that there are probably more. More songs that are in the stable, but were never brought out for fear of rejection. 

He hears George, that night he’d arrived back in London from Liverpool, saying to him:  _ you could have told me _ , and Paul knew that was true. He could have told George anything and George would have listened. He wishes he could say the same thing for himself. He realizes that there’s so much inside of George that hasn’t been said. He thinks:  _ you can tell me now _ , and promises to make that true. 

“It’s a great song,” Paul tells the room. “I’m geared up to play on it.”

George freezes at the sudden compliment. He glances across the room to Ringo uneasily. It’s taken everyone off-guard and Paul hates that it has. He realizes he could probably count on one hand the amount of times he’s said that out loud. 

“Thanks,” George mutters, looking like he might blush at any second. He clears his throat and it makes Paul smile. For all the openness and love that George gives to others, it’s always made him shy whenever it’s directed inward. 

The rest of the week is planned out for them. Paul listens absently, but really all he can think about is how he wants to be better for his friends. How much he’s thought that since his life turned upside-down, and  _ how little _ he’s actually done to make that a reality. He thinks of John, drinking less and  _ actually going _ to these sessions Cynthia has set up for them. He wonders what his first step might be. He realizes that he’s as afraid of this first step as he was about the book as a whole. 

“What do you think is the worst thing about me?” Paul asks Jane that night, when he’s back at Cavendish, and they’re splitting a curry between them on the couch. 

Jane looks up at him, sees that he’s serious and tries to laugh it off anyway. “The worst thing about you?” she parrots back. “Why does this sort of question feel like a trap?”

“It’s not a trap,” he assures her. She keeps her eyes on him suspiciously, so Paul tries to assuage her: “John’s quit drinking,” he explains. That makes her raise her eyebrows. “Well, not entirely, but he’s meaning to drink much less.” She gets this funny little expression on her face, one that simultaneously says that she’s impressed, but that she’s also not holding her breath. “He said it all started because he’d asked Cyn what her least favourite thing about him was.”

“And she said drinking?” Jane muses. Paul decides to ignore the implication that there were worse things at play in the psyche of his close friend, the man he realizes he now has to say he loves. 

“I don’t know,” Paul mutters, digging his fork back into the take-out curry. It was the wrong way to talk about it, he realizes. It was supposed to be about him, anyway, not John. She shifts closer to him; when he doesn’t look up at her, she takes the fork out of his hand and rests it against the foil bowl. 

“You’re trying to say something,” she tells him apologetically. “Tell me what you mean.”

Paul sighs, looks up at her and sees total sincerity. It makes it both easier and harder to breathe all at once. He shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know, I suppose I can just see the way it’s making him better, you know.”

“You can quit drinking too, Paul --”

“No, it’s not about that, really,” he says quickly. “I just…” He sighs again, steeling himself to just  _ say it _ . “I  _ know _ Cyn probably wanted to say other things, you know. Other things that she didn’t like, that made them break up.” Jane nods in agreement. “But it was kind of her to say the drinking. Because it was a part of it, you know,  _ of course _ it was a part of it. The drugs, too. But it was this sort-of bite-sized way for him to -- to  _ move forward,  _ you know?” Jane nods again. “And I see it moving him forward, right? I can see it helping him. With other things. It’s making everything clearer and he’s…” He swallows hard when he realizes he’s about to tell her about the psychologist sessions. “I don’t know,” he says, changing course. “I just wish that there was something small, or unintimidating, or whatever, that I could do to make this easier, to get started at least. Because I want to make myself  _ better _ . But I feel like I don’t know where to start, or where to look.”

Jane sighs sympathetically. She reaches out to take his hand. “That’s a big question,” she tells him, instead of saying the wrong thing, which is:  _ I haven’t got an answer that you’ll like _ .

“Yeah,” Paul agrees. 

She squeezes his hand tighter. “I see you being honest, Paul. I see you being open and looking in on yourself, and I…” She sighs sadly. “And I don’t think you like what you see.” The truth of it hits him too hard, it winds him. He sets his jaw, trying to keep the thing that’s formed in his throat from coming out. “And I wish you wouldn’t,” she tells him. “But, I also think that’s just a part of it.” His shoulders sag inward; it isn’t that he’s disappointed that she’s given him the wrong answer, it’s that it feels right. “But there’s something… Something that is at the root of all this. It makes you angry, just on it’s own, but also the fact that you haven’t found it. You will,” she promises him. “You’ll find it and you’ll face it with as much dignity, and strength, and pride as I know you’re capable of.”

Paul swallows hard, blinks away at the tears that are threatening to fall down his cheeks. He sniffles once, tries to pull it all back together and asks: “So, there isn’t an easy fix, is that what you’re saying?”

She laughs, so he does, too. And it’s genuine, it’s sympathetic, and it’s also a little sad. “I think that is what I’m saying, unfortunately,” she placates him. 

“Life used to be so simple,” he laments. 

“That’s because you were walking blind.” He smiles at her, knows she must be right, but finds himself wishing he’d just bloody stayed that way. 

\--

On Wednesday, every time the door into Studio 2 opens, Paul stops playing his guitar. It happens enough times that even George Martin pointedly sighs over the P.A. system.

“What’s got you so jumpy?” Geo asks after a few of the engineers suggest they take a break and they all head into the canteen. 

Paul looks up from the endless swirl of the stir stick in his coffee cup. “What?”

“In there,” George explains. “You can hardly get through a take without looking at the door.”

“Oh,” Paul says, going red. He can’t say that he’s worried about John, he can’t risk spilling his secret like that, so he just says: “Sorry.”

Then, George leans forward, halfway over the table and asks: “Are you alright?”

He looks so concerned that Paul hears himself laugh uncomfortably. “Of course I am,” he says, though he realizes that that isn’t true. He wants to tell George that he’s tired of looking in at himself and hating everything about it, he’s tired of seeing the world as something hateful and dangerous, he’s tired of loving and loving and loving and finding that it isn’t enough. 

“It would be alright if you weren’t, you know,” George presses. Paul feels himself go pale. He stays stock-still, just staring back at George. He’s trapped somewhere between fight-or-flight. “It’s quite a big thing that’s happened to you,” he says carefully. 

“You think I’m lying?” Paul snaps back. He doesn’t care that it only makes that sound true. George leans back in his chair, knowing a shutdown when he sees one. He opens his mouth, probably to apologize, so Paul tells him: “I’m getting through this just fine, thank you.”

“Okay,” George says pointedly. “Okay,  _ sorry _ I said anything.”

George starts to stand and Paul realizes too late that he’d rather him stay. He’s too afraid to ask that of him, anyway. He glances across the canteen and catches Rich having been watching them. He averts his eyes as Paul turns towards him. Paul realizes the two of them have spoken about him. They’ve both clearly voiced their concerns and George had been the one brave enough to stick his neck out about it. It makes Paul bristle. He hunches further over his cup of coffee and realizes he hasn’t had a sip of it when one of the engineers pulls them into the studio. 

John’s there by the time they come in through the back hallway, sitting cross-legged on one of the chairs, tuning his guitar. 

He turns towards them as they all pile back inside and he grins widely. He stands, accepting a handshake from George and a hug from Rich and it nearly stops Paul dead in his tracks. He looks genuinely happy, genuinely lighter. Paul realizes that the session went well. Something bitter bubbles up inside of him, he hates that it has, but it doesn’t make it any easier to ignore. 

He’d thought John might be miserable. It might have made his own misery easier to bear. 

“How’d it go?” Paul asks quietly, once the others are distracted with their own instruments. 

John shrugs easily and tells him honestly: “It wasn’t so bad, actually.” He laughs, as if he can’t believe he’s just said that.  _ Paul _ can’t believe he’s just said that. He shrugs again, hits the top few strings of his guitar to make sure they’re in tune, and adds: “I imagine we’ll get into the heavy stuff later.” Paul just nods, so John must get the sense that it isn’t the answer he’d been looking for. Grasping at straws, he changes the subject. “How’s the speech coming, then?”

Paul balks a laugh. “It’s hopeless,” he says. John narrows his eyes at him, trying to suss out where exactly he’s put him into such a sour mood. 

“I could help you --”

“Not like you know Michael all that well, is it?” Paul cuts him off, so John just rolls his eyes and says: “Suppose I don’t.” He looks away from Paul, even takes a small step away from him and fiddles his way through a scale. 

Paul realizes he’s ruined it. He’s made John just as miserable as he’d hoped he’d be.

“I’m sorry,” he suddenly says. He shakes his head when he realizes just how much he means that. “I’m sorry, I’m in a piss-poor mood and I’ve just dragged you down with me.”

John glances at him, slightly wary of the apology, but must see the sincerity of it because he sighs, drops his hand away from the fretboard of the guitar and closes that space between them. “It’s alright,” he offers. 

“I don’t know what’s up with me,” he confesses. He inhales deeply and feels all over again just how  _ tired _ he is. “This wedding’s getting to me. The album.” The real stressor hangs heavy between them. John nods anyway, allowing him to omit the whole truth. 

“It’s a lot,” John allows. Paul just nods in response, though he’d really prefer John to hug him. “Would you still like me to come to the wedding?” John ventures. Paul nods so fast it makes John smile, so he teases: “Or, have I somehow annoyed you beyond that luxury?”

“You haven’t,” Paul says through a laugh, giving his shoulder a light shove. 

John smiles fondly. There’s a voice over the P.A. system asking if they’re ready. John nudges him affectionately before he makes his way over to his microphone. 

It’s strange; Paul can’t believe how low he’d gone without John here. He can’t believe how short he’d been with George. Somewhere after their eighth take, Paul gets George another cup of coffee as a sort of peace offering. He thinks that, one day, he might actually be brave enough to say ‘thank you’. 

\--

They’re late getting out of London. Rather, John’s late getting ready to get out of London. 

He fidgets in the passenger seat all the way up to Cheshire; Paul’s just glad he’d decided on driving, he doesn’t think he’d fare much better without having something to do with his hands and feet. Their favourite radio station goes out less than an hour out of London and they’re forced to listen to the BBC. 

John points out the window, out at the rolling hills, the sparse wire fences. There are some animals off the roadside, some too far to even discern what they are. Sheep, probably. “This landscape always makes me think of that weekend we spent in Berkshire,” he says to the glass. Paul smiles to himself, grins even wider when John turns away from the window to look at him. He’s smiling too. 

“Yeah,” Paul says back. 

“That was a laugh,” John muses. His voice has gone soft with fondness and Paul’s so glad that he’s given John a memory that makes him that happy. 

“You forgot a jumper,” Paul remembers. 

“Yeah,” John balks. “And I had to either wear one of yours where the sleeves only came down to my elbows, or your Uncle’s and let the hem fall down to my ankles.”

Paul laughs. “You always think you’re so much bigger than me.” John raises his eyebrows. “The sleeves of my jumper  _ did not _ only come down to your elbows. We were practically the same size.”

“You’d lost all that baby fat by then, remember?” John pokes. “You were smaller.”

“Being skinnier doesn’t make my arms shorter.”

John just shrugs easily and says: “Maybe you’d picked up one of Mike’s by mistake.” Paul rolls his eyes, hears John sigh contentedly next to him. Then, he suddenly remembers: “We played our one and only gig as a duo there.”

“We did,” Paul agrees. 

“Do you think we were any good?” John asks, still smiling brightly. “Or, do you think folk there were just being polite since we kind-of, sort-of owned the pub that weekend?”

“Owned the pub?” Paul asks incredulously. 

“Well, we were  _ related  _ to owning the pub --”

“No,” Paul says quickly. “I don’t think they were being polite. Not very Northern of them to be polite on account of someone having a bit of money, is it?”

“I suppose not,” John allows, then shifts closer to Paul. “So, you think we were good, then?”

Paul laughs, glances at John, sees that he’s actually expecting an answer and says: “Why do you need me to tell you we were good when we were nineteen? You’re famous the world-over, you’re a Beatle now, you know?”

John smiles, seems to blush slightly, then shrugs. “Dunno,” he mumbles. “I reckon it’s just because that’s the stuff I miss.” That gives Paul slight pause, but he realizes that John doesn’t sound particularly sad about it, it’s simply true: the pure missing of something you no longer have. “Small pubs, you know, a small audience who’s really listening.” Paul hums in agreement; he misses that too, though, he bites his tongue on saying anything about the decision to quit touring. He’d have kept going. In a smaller way, he supposes. But he’d have kept playing live music. “You remember that night on the film when we played in that hotel in Austria?” John asks. Paul just nods in response. “That was the most fun I’d had playing music in a long time.”

“You don’t like being a commodity,” Paul observes. 

John scoffs, nodding, and says: “That’s probably just it.” Then, he smiles cheekily and says: “You know, maybe you  _ were _ onto something with all that Sgt. Pepper shit.” Paul laughs. “Changing our names and everything.”

“Oh, was I?” Paul teases. “I was onto something with Sgt. Pepper?”

“Alright, alright,” John mumbles. “You got enough adulation for it, you don’t need me saying it.”

“I like hearing you say it, though,” Paul presses back. 

“I know you do,” John grumbles. 

He turns back out towards the window. They both start to relax back into their former quietness. John even shimmies himself further down in the car seat, getting himself comfortable. He must feel a nap coming on. Then something strikes him. He sits up straight. “Oh, fuck me!”

“What?”

“I forgot the--...  _ Fuck _ …”

“What is it?”

John sighs, dropping his forehead into his hands. “I forgot the hat,” he says vaguely. Paul shrugs at him, expecting more. He hasn’t got a clue what that means. “Mimi forgot one of her hats down with me last time she was in London, she asked me to bring it back to her and I’ve forgotten it.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad --” Paul tries. 

“She called me this morning about it,” John mutters. “Fuck, I can’t believe I’ve forgotten it.”

“She’s made do without it,” Paul offers. “You can mail it once we get back.”

“She’ll never let me hear the end of it,” John says, and Paul knows he’s probably right, but he also knows that John seems more put-out by it than he normally would. He shakes his head at himself and stares back out the window. Paul feels compelled to tell him that everything was alright, but he thinks John might just snap at him. He wants to reach out and touch him, but he doesn’t know why. The car fills with something dreadful, but it shouldn’t. It  _ really _ isn’t so bad, not on the surface, anyway, but there’s something needled in under John’s skin and he’s too scared to say what it is. 

\--

It’s later by the time they get to his father’s place than Paul had thought it would be. Most of the lights inside of the house have been turned off. Paul had soured somewhere along the way. The closer he’d gotten to Cheshire, the closer it came to the time to watch his kid brother get married, the poorer he felt. 

They step inside the front door and the place is too quiet. “I reckon we’ve missed everyone,” Paul mutters; it’s something bitter, as though it’s anybody’s fault that they’re late. John hums in acknowledgement, but doesn’t say anything. He isn’t about to wear the blame for this, though if they’d gotten out of London when Paul had wanted to, they might have missed the worst ot the travel.

Deeper in the house, there’s the sound of the back door opening and closing. Setting his bag down, Paul strides towards the kitchen. It’s Mike’s Angie, a cigarette smoked down to the butt between her fingers and a glass of straight whiskey. She freezes where she is; she’s meant to be in bed, Paul can see that in the way her cheeks have started to go rosy. “Too nervous to sleep?” he asks her playfully. 

The joke eases her; the truth of it, the permission to show the nerves she’s probably been hiding all day. She sets her glass down on the countertop and rushes towards him. “Shurrup,” she mutters just as she wraps her arms around his middle, burying her nose into the middle of his chest. He realizes he’s probably the closest thing she could get to Mikey right about now, so he lets her have it. 

Paul hears John’s footsteps edging closer as they start to pull away from one another. He side-steps slightly, allowing Angie to see him hovering in the doorway. “I’ve brought John along, I hope that’s alright.”

She goes from pink to red. Paul smiles about it, but John absolutely  _ beams _ . 

“Hello,” he says to her, as if it’s his place to be the shy one. 

“Hi,” she manages back. Somehow, she’s present enough to accept the hand he holds out to her, watches him take her hand in his and when she won’t shake back, he switches gears and kisses the back of her palm instead. She giggles at him and Paul feels something sink in his stomach. He has to roll his eyes when John glances at him with a cheeky grin, because he realizes he’d be had by it too. 

“Have you drunk all the whiskey?” Paul asks, heading for the cabinet where he knows his father keeps all the good stuff. “Or is there still enough for the both of us?”

“Oh, well, I --” John starts to protest. Paul’s rifled through the cabinet and, bless him, his Dad’s stocked John’s favourite. He glances over his shoulder and holds the bottle towards him, label-out, and it makes John wire his mouth shut, then he smiles, tilting his head to one side and says: “One won’t hurt me.” Though, Paul hears the teasing question underneath:  _ are you trying to get me drunk? _ And maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, all he knows is that a good kiss from John might set everything right inside of him. 

They all sit ‘round the table; the amber bottle of scotch in its place in the middle. 

“Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep?” John asks when Angie reaches forward for the bottle to pour herself a second. She glares across the table at him as if it isn’t  _ John Lennon _ sitting across from her and it makes Paul laugh. John feels the daggers of it, because he holds his hands up in surrender, then holds his glass out to her, offering to join her with a second of his own. 

Paul downs what’s left of his own and mutters: “You’ve pulled me arm, you lot have,” sliding his glass towards her as well. 

“Has there ever been a worse influence than a bride the night before her wedding day?” Angie boasts. Paul laughs, so she adds: “Just you wait, you’ll be deep into the whiskey the night before you’re married too,” she promises him. 

She’s probably right, so he tells her: “I’m deep into the whiskey right now. Not even my wedding.”

“Paul always gets pissed when it comes to weddings,” John teases, silently drudging up the past of George’s wedding; a ceremony, Paul would like to add, that John hadn’t even been at. He shouldn’t be poking fun about a night he hadn’t even been a part of. 

Paul rolls his eyes at him. “That was one time,” he allows, though he’s sure there are more just like it. 

“Our manager had to put him to bed,” John tells Angie, leaning over the table conspiratorially. Paul feels his breath hitch in his throat. He feels his grip go tough around his glass of whiskey. John says something else, but Paul doesn’t hear it. All he can think is:  _ I never told you that _ . 

He must say it, because John goes sheepish in front of him, squanders about with it and lamely asks: “Aye?”

“I said, I never told you that,” Paul repeats through gritted teeth. 

John flounders; he knows he’s put his foot in it. He glances across the table at Angie, who must not offer any help. He looks sorry enough about it, and Paul realizes that John probably only knows because it’d come up in bed with Brian. They’re both holding onto things that shouldn’t see the light of day, so Paul spares him. He takes a long pull of whiskey and laments: “Is there nothing sacred?”

Grateful for the easy response, Angie adds: “No secrets among friends, aye?”

“Oh, aye,” Paul agrees, though he looks across the table at John and realizes that everything about them has been built on secrets. He hears John mumble out an agreement of his own. 

Paul and Angie have a third glass; John is quite suited to two. The alcohol must hit him a little harder because of how knackered he is, but there’s something burning inside of him. His head swims in it. John sits there quietly as he and Angie finish their final glasses and it just feels like he’s judging them. They ought to have stopped; because suddenly John Lennon is epitome of self-control. It isn’t true; there’s a voice of reason in his head telling him that it isn’t true. John’s just gone quiet because he’s as exhausted as Paul is and he’s no good at socializing with strangers when he’s past his point of no return, no matter how pleasant and kind and familial Angie is between them. 

Angie takes them upstairs; they whisper too loudly to one another about needing to be quiet. 

“You know,” Angie tells them. “Your Dad mentioned you might need two rooms, so I think one of youse in here,” she says, stopping in front of one door and flicking the light on. It’s a pristine, untouched guest bedroom. It isn’t Paul’s room, so he nods to John, gesturing inside for him. 

“Looks like that’s me,” he mumbles. He steps inside, drops his bag to the floor and takes a look around. It’s littered with a few knick knacks on every surface; a pile of knitted blankets on a chest at the end of the bed that seems to grab John’s attention. 

Paul realizes he’s stepped inside with him when he hears Angie ask him: “You know where you are, Paul?”

Glancing over his shoulder at her, he nods. She smiles at him, gracious for the company they’ve given her and ready for sleep. She’s none the wiser to the fact that he and John  _ could _ share a room, he realizes. Secrets are what they’re made of. She tells John good night, who’s already sat down on the bed, bouncing lightly on the mattress, testing its give, then she slinks down the hallway to Mike’s room. 

Alone, Paul takes a deep breath. He’s a little drunk, a little irritable, and he doesn’t know why, but he realizes it still feels true in his heart: a good kiss from John might set it all right. Something’s switched off inside of him, he reckons it’s been switched off for weeks, and he needs John to switch it back on. It’s the whiskey in his system that makes him go sentimental about it: he wishes he wouldn’t have to ask John to look at him, to see that something’s gone dim, and do something about it. He wishes John would just  _ know _ . 

And maybe he does. And maybe he knows that a good kiss won’t save either of them from anything, but he doesn’t want Paul to hear it. 

“I’m off,” Paul decides at the thought. He knows that the rest of where his head goes should be done in the darkness of his own bedroom, staring up at a ceiling in a house he isn’t familiar with. 

“Okay,” John says, though he sounds like he’d like to say more. 

It just lays more fuel to the fire. John  _ knows _ . John sees how dull he’s gone, but he won’t do anything about it. It isn’t a fair assessment; he’s still got enough sense in his head to recognize that, but for a moment, he’d just like to allow himself to wallow. He feels sad, the night before his brother’s wedding. He feels powerless, as the richest and most influential man in the news. He feels empty with all the love in the world from people who don’t matter. 

He turns on his heel, turns his back to John and thinks:  _ stop me, touch me, kiss me,  _ do _ anything _ . 

“Good night, Paul,” John says to the back of his head, and he sounds so sorry for him that it makes Paul’s chest ache. Perhaps, he’s just imagining it. 

\--

It’s the events of the day, it’s the good night’s rest, it’s his family, it’s John; it all comes together the following morning and makes that small black part of him easier to ignore. If he pokes and prods at it, it grows a little bigger, but mostly, he’s able to ignore it and it shrinks and shrinks, until it’s just this thing inside of him that can exist alongside the joy he finds in good coffee, in a good breakfast, in his brother’s shy smile when he realizes that this is the first day of the rest of his life. 

He suddenly understands why John might not drink so much. There’s a stormcloud deep inside of him, too, but he’s tampered it down to its coals. Alcohol just seemed to ignite it. That’s why he was doing so much better. Better than Paul, too. He’d already started to learn how to mow it all down, keep it all clean. Paul wonders if the sessions he’s done with Cynthia have been helpful in all the other ways drinking less isn’t, but it makes that horrible thing inside of him thrum so loud it’s almost all he can think about. So, he sits down at the piano instead. He plays an old tune he’d learned when he was fourteen. His father recognizes it immediately. He sits down next to him and plays the same tune an octave higher. 

John comes into the sitting room, a cup of tea in tow and watches them from the doorway. It makes him feel real and tangible, like there was something loved and present about him beyond this empty feeling inside of him. His father sings the words that Paul doesn’t know and it makes him feel like a kid again, untouched by anything sad or frightening. It makes him feel fixed, but he doesn’t even know what it is exactly that’s broken him, or when it happened. He glances over his shoulder at John, who smiles at him reassuringly, and he realizes all over again that there’s love all around him. Despite having changed, despite becoming something new, there was love around him --  _ directed _ at him. He thinks it should be enough to make all that fear and hurt and loneliness go away, and maybe it does, in this moment, it does. But he can still feel his own pain fitted somewhere deep inside of him, like some black box that he’s not meant to look at, or open. And every time he gets too close to it, it sends an electric current through him. It tells him to  _ ignore it _ , leave it be. And maybe all that means is that he’s letting it fester, letting it grow stronger until it could take him over completely. Who knows? All he understands is that it feels safer this way. 

He whistles the chorus along with his father. The melody, at least, he knows. He listens to himself, the keys of the piano he’s hitting and thinks:  _ ignore it _ . Right now, be loved. 

He steals a glance at John again; he’s still smiling. He can ignore the black box inside of him too. And if John can’t see it, maybe it was all in his head anyway. If John can’t see it, he can try to pretend not to see it either. 

\--

Paul watches himself in the mirror as he straightens his tie out, tightening the knot around his throat, and he isn’t even sure  _ who _ he’s looking at, never mind if he likes this person. Alone, he finally sees the dark circles under his eyes. He sees what this weight he feels is doing to him. 

There’s a gentle knock on his door and before he turns, before he even says: “come in,” John’s stepping in and shutting the door behind him like they’re doing something they shouldn’t, grinning like he was getting away with something. 

He looks sharp in a cream-coloured suit. 

“You look more nervous than Mikey does,” John playfully observes. 

“Cor,” Paul huffs out, turning back towards his own reflection. John continues closer to him, close enough that his reflection suddenly appears next to Paul’s in the mirror. Paul’s breath hitches in his throat. There’s pink and orange in John’s tie, light enough to go with the cream in his suit, but distinct. It brings out the freckles across his nose, the auburn in his hair. Paul blinks and finds he has to look away. “I can’t believe he’s getting married before me.”

“It’s just not right,” John tuts back. He smiles at Paul’s reflection, then his eyes flicker down towards Paul’s hands and he must see that Paul’s shaking. “Ey, come here,” he mutters, setting his hands on Paul’s shoulders, turning him away from the mirror, towards him. He immediately finishes up the work on Paul’s tie, carefully tightening it and flattening it out against his chest. Happy with his work, he tugs at the lapels of Paul’s jacket and nods. “There,” he says, his voice soft with how much he likes being this close. 

John’s eyes flicker upward without warning. Paul isn’t able to hide that he’s just shamelessly looking, the same way he’d looked into his reflection. It’s as much of a mirror now as it had been before. 

They’re together; they might as well be together. John’s just told him he loves him, without words, only with his hands. And Paul doesn’t look away from him. He’s saying  _ I love you too _ by not pulling away. He swallows hard when he bitterly wonders why they can’t have it all. Why can’t they have a love like this out loud? Why should it be quiet? But quiet’s all they’ll ever be allowed, and now, they don’t even have that. 

“Thanks,” Paul manages.

John nods, but he looks as though he’d rather just kiss him. He steps away from Paul and tucks some hair behind his ears, looking flushed. Paul imagines he looks the same. “I’ve always liked weddings,” he suddenly decides, though Paul isn’t sure if that’s true. He wonders how many he’s even been to. 

Paul smiles and nods. “Me too,” he agrees before he gets to work on his cuffs. He realizes he doesn’t just like weddings in a sort of general sense, he realizes he’s always thought about what his own might be like. Every new celebration, he’d always tucked away a little tidbit, a new way to tell the woman he’s marrying that he loves her in their own special way. The thought makes his blood run cold. The  _ woman _ he’s marrying. 

He glances back at the mirror. Catches John fiddling with the carnation in his breast pocket, blissfully unaware that Paul’s whole world has flipped upside-down, or that it’s flipped back to the way it had always been. He shuts his eyes and it  _ is _ a woman he marries. He doesn’t know if it’s just because he still hates that part of himself that would like to live the rest of his life in love with a man, in love with John, or if the normal marriage, the vibrant family is truly what he wants. All his life, even up until the last second, he would have always said, unflinchingly:  _ I want a family _ . It had never dawned on him that he could be the sort of man that the world wouldn’t allow that for. 

Finished with the flower, John casually looks up, sees Paul watching him, and smiles; it’s something earnest that turns uncertain. “What?” he asks. Paul shakes his head, finds he can’t say anything, so John steps towards him. “What’s wrong?” he prods and Paul realizes his eyes have gone glossy. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking away from John, wiping at his eyes with the backs of his hands. He feels John follow him, feels him set his hands on Paul’s wrists, tugging at him gently, like he might with Julian. It’s a touch that’s begging Paul to talk to him, but Paul knows he has to wire his mouth shut. He  _ knows _ he can’t say anything that would sound like:  _ being with you wouldn’t be enough _ . So, he uses the thing between them that neither of them are ever able to question. He lies through his teeth and tells John: “I think I would have just liked my Mum to be here. For Mike, you know.” The words come out and they actually feel truer than he’d expected them to. 

They feel so true that John nods. It feels so sympathetic and reassuring that Paul feels a sort of weight fall off of him. His shoulders sag inward and he drops his eyes to the floor between their feet. It gives John the chance to put himself in front of Paul again. “She’s around,” John tells him, touching his fingertips to the center of Paul’s chest, letting him know  _ exactly _ where she is. “Mike’s got her too. And Jim.”

“Yeah,” Paul allows. He closes his eyes, sees the flower-altar they’ve put up in the back garden, the rows of white folding chairs. He sees himself standing under the altar’s wreath instead of his brother. When he opens his eyes, it’s John in front of him. It’s John’s hands he feels against his own. And he thinks that has to  _ mean _ something. He wants to say ‘thank you’, he wants to say ‘I love you’, he wants to kiss him. Mostly, he just wants John to hold his hand even when there isn’t a door between them and everyone else. 

“You should check on him,” John instructs him gently, meaning Michael, and Paul realizes he’s right. If Paul’s just thought of Mary, he’s sure Mikey has too. He nods again, but he must not look too strong on his feet, because John tells him: “You look good.”

“Thanks,” Paul mutters back shyly. He smiles because he thinks that might hide how pink his cheeks have gone. “You’ll be okay downstairs?” he asks. 

John just shrugs casually. “The McCartney clan doesn’t scare me.” He thinks:  _ good _ , before he realizes it’s because he wants John to be a part of it. 

They leave one another in the hallway; John heads downstairs, towards the door in the kitchen, and Paul goes to the room his brother is staying in. There’s raucous laughter inside; he recognizes his brother’s voice in the midst of it all. He steps inside and one of Michael’s mates has got his hand on Mike’s shoulder, still laughing. Mike glances up at him the moment he hears the door push open.

“You’ve finally pulled yourself away from the mirror, I see,” Mike says to him. His friend snickers, but then seems to sense that he should give them their space. 

“Piss off,” Paul tells him, stepping towards him, tugging at his bow-tie. “Somebody’s got to look good in the photos.”

“Really?” Mike presses. “On my wedding day?” 

Paul laughs and lays a clumsy kiss to his temple, then takes his brother in properly. He looks him up and down and feels proud to know him: someone so light and caring and in love. “You look so sharp, I bet Angie won’t even recognize you.”

“A Northern boy in a tux, can you believe it?” Mike says and he looks so happy he could cry. Paul gives his shoulders a squeeze and absently shakes his head, because he supposes he  _ can’t _ believe it, that these two boys, who had lost their mother as preteens could somehow find themselves this happy. Paul realizes that John had been right -- Mary was here with them. 

“You look good, Mikey,” Paul says, deciding to go serious. Mike nods his thanks. “Very happy,” he adds, flicking his eyes down towards the front buttons of his brother’s shirt. He can’t look that sort of happiness in the face. 

“I am,” Mike confirms quietly. Then, Paul feels Mike’s hand at one of his elbows. “I’m glad you still came. I thought maybe --”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Paul insists and he  _ means _ it. He’d have made it with a hole in his head. He sighs, because he realizes that there will be some empty chairs downstairs  _ because _ he’d decided to show up. Extended family, some of Angela’s too, they’d decided they weren’t coming once Mike had confirmed that Paul would be here. Being related to a Beatle had been tough enough, as it is, but  _ this _ … This was something else entirely. “I’m sorry if I’ve --” he mutters before he realizes he shouldn’t. 

“Don’t.” Paul glances up at Mike and wonders when Mike became the older brother. When their eyes meet, Mike has to look away. He’s probably wondering the same thing. “You shouldn’t apologize.”

“Right,” Paul whispers back. Mike squeezes at his elbow, but then must decide that it isn’t enough because he suddenly envelops Paul in a tight hug and it’s exactly what they both need. They forget that there are other people in the room, they forget that they grew up poor and hungry, they forget that it isn’t the two of them against the world anymore. “I love you,” Paul decides to say, even though it isn’t what they do. He just wants to tell the people that mean something to him that he loves them. 

“Love you too, Big Mac,” Mike says back to him, then they pull away from one another, but Paul feels just like he had with Mike up against his chest: loved, needed, secure. 

“Go get married,” Paul tells him, going red with how open he’s gone. 

Mike laughs, going red himself, and turns to grab his corsage. He holds it out to Paul. Wordlessly, Paul gets to work on it, keeping it straight, making sure everything is as perfect as it can be for the happiest day of his brother’s life. He feels protective of this moment. He suddenly feels the years that have made them both. He’s so glad to be here, he’s so glad to have a brother that radiates love the way Mike does; it makes it so much easier to reflect it back onto him. 

Paul hands Mike the rings when they’re all downstairs, in front of all their friends and family, and it feels fitting, to be handing off such a precious thing to his kid brother. He feels as though he’s exactly where he’s meant to be, giving Michael everything he can, metaphorical or material, to be the best and happiest version of himself he can be. 

When Michael and Angie kiss one another, Paul finds John out in the rows of chairs, between all the smiling faces and clapping hands, John’s watching him. He feels a warm wave over him, touching every part of him. He feels the way he does when John holds his hand. He wishes John was up here with him. He wishes he lived in a world that would allow that. John winks at him when Paul doesn’t look away when he thinks he will. It says:  _ I am up there with you _ . It says:  _ I love you _ , and it makes Paul feel like he can breathe again.

John hands him a glass of champagne as soon as the ceremony disperses and morphs into the proper reception and party that they’re both more used to. There’s a band playing a jig under the tent set up in the back garden. The sound of music settles something inside of him, the way it always does. The champagne helps, too. He gets himself another before John’s even finished his first. 

It’s becoming a pattern, he realizes, but he decides to ignore that thought, too. 

Somewhere after his brother’s new mother-in-law asks: “Don’t you want to settle down too?”, but before he realizes his little cousins are treating him the exact same way they always have, he has his fifth glass of champagne. He realizes it’d been a mistake to allow himself so much to drink when he quits a dance with one of Angie’s nieces and the world doesn’t stop spinning with him. 

He grabs onto the nearest chairback, steadies himself, and smiles down at her. “That’s me, winded,” he says. “You’re too good for me, I need a rest.”

Unperturbed, she runs across the dancefloor. Paul watches her go, watches her join the small camp of kids who have taken up shop with John, who looks happy and connected in a way that Paul hasn’t since he’d finished his third drink. 

He’s good with the kids, Paul realizes. Better than he’d ever thought he’d be after Julian. He realizes how lucky he’s been, to always have what he wants within reach. Always, if he’d ever wanted something, all he had to do was step out and take it: fame, celebrity, music, girls, a family. It had all come so easy to him. It hurts to want something you can’t have. He hates it. 

Beyond the tented party, the white chairs from the ceremony are still lined-up in front of the altar. He takes one at the end of a row. He feels shrouded by the trees overhead. Hidden away, but close enough that he can still hear the music and the laughter of the world around him. He thinks if he found somewhere  _ too quiet _ he might forget he exists in this world altogether. 

He sits himself down and lights a cigarette. It burns through him. It pricks at his dry throat, but he’s just glad for such a terrible feeling to have an explanation for it. At least the cigarette destroys him in a way that he understands.

After another deep drag, with his lungs full, he hears footsteps coming towards him through the dewy grass. He twists in his seat and it’s John; he’d known it had to be John. He smiles meekly, then twists back forward. Wordlessly, John pulls another one of the folding chairs up in front of him. He sits down in it, sighing, feeling tired and happy, the way a good dance should make you feel. 

He looks Paul over, must decide it isn’t worth poking fun at his mood and instead says: “Have you got one of those for me?” meaning a cigarette. 

Rolling his eyes, Paul digs into the pocket of his slacks and tosses his nearly-empty carton in John’s lap. John fumbles with it, then smiles triumphantly when he’s got it secured between his hands. He digs into it for one, lights it up, and just joins Paul in quiet reflection. 

“Didn’t you say you liked weddings?” Paul asks, hoping to be left alone. John glances up at him, confused and amused all at once. He raises his eyebrows, expecting an explanation. “You’re missing the fun of it,” Paul supplies. 

“Ah,” John mutters, nods once, not buying into Paul’s shite. He just shrugs and muses: “I can still hear the music. That’s really what weddings are all about anyway, aren’t they?”

“Not really,” Paul answers, his voice riddled with the drink and a little bitterness, too. 

John sighs pointedly. He decides against his earlier judgement and demands: “What is it, then?”

“What?”

“The stick up your arse,” he says easily and it makes Paul go red with embarrassment and little anger as well. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing --”

“Is it really because your sweet younger brother is getting married before you are?” he ponders. 

“Piss off, John,” Paul warns. 

“Making you feel like a failure?” He just shrugs when Paul just answers him with a glare. “Or, maybe it’s because we’ve all got to realize we might have a few bigots in the family that will miss weddings and holidays because you’re  _ queerly _ there.” Paul shakes his head at him, so John says again: “Then, what is it?”

Paul means to go angry; he opens his mouth to speak, but realizes his voice would just crack in half if he said a word. He wires his mouth shut and feels big hot tears make their way to the corners of his eyes. He bats away at them, getting rid of all the evidence before John can call him on it. He crosses his arms over one another, leaning forward, resting his elbows down on his knee. He realizes that if he were lying down, this would practically be the fetal position and it makes him feel pathetic all over again. “I just…” he manages before his voice cracks anyway. 

He shakes his head at himself, then John’s hand is at the crook of his elbow, trying to tug him out of all this. John wants him to look at him, but Paul’s afraid that it might all come pouring out of him if he does. “Paulie?” John tries, in a sort of soft, teasing voice. When Paul doesn’t look at him, he says again: “Paul,” sounding so sincere, Paul figures he might at well just look. He’ll cry if he sees John, but fucking hell, he’ll cry if he just hears his voice too. 

“I’m sorry,” Paul says. “I’ve had too much to drink.”

“It’s alright,” John soothes, but he really means to tell him that that’s not the thing that’s wrong here. 

Paul realizes that John knows pain when he sees it, and to him, talking about it would always be better than leaving it be, leaving it to grow unchecked. “This has been harder than I thought it would be,” he confesses. 

John nods. “Being with your family?” he asks gently. “Or something else?”

Paul sighs heavily. “I suppose I just…” He shrugs helplessly and says: “I’ve never had to think much about what my life will look like… You know… It was always just… Wife, kids, proper home, and --” John blanches in front of him and Paul suddenly feels like he should take it all back. John looks away from him, but he gives him another nod. “I don’t know,” Paul says, as if that’s some sort of way to soften the edges of what he’s said. 

“That’s um…” John huffs out a laugh. He sucks at his cigarette as if his life depended on it. “That’s quite heavy, Paul.”

“Yeah,” Paul manages. 

“You’ve always liked that whole idea,” John observes, as if it’s really just struck him properly for the first time. A sort of smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “I suppose I’ve always pictured you that way too. Kids,” he explains. “A  _ wife _ ,” he says pointedly and Paul feels something sharp in his chest because he realizes John isn’t saying it to hurt him; it looks like he’s just pierced himself with it. He blinks and looks down at the grass between his feet. Paul just watches him: he sees John’s mind running away with him, he wishes he knew how to make it stop. 

John’s always been the one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Paul  _ sees _ the way his own thoughts are hurting him. He  _ sees _ how much they’re making him hate himself. He shuts his eyes and when he opens them, there’s something like resolve inside of them. Which Paul hadn’t been expecting. Instead of putting words to all this self-directed vitriol, he just asks: “So it’s still all that for you, then?”

“I don’t know,” Paul mutters and it’s the truth of it that strikes them both. Something so stark and ingrained has fallen off its pedestal. And Paul knows that it’s John who has toppled it over. John knows it is too. He laughs because he feels the tears back again. “You see the predicament now?”

John’s shoulders seem to fall away from his ears. His eyes go wide and helplessly sad. He says: “You’d do with a wife,” and Paul realizes he means that there’s still hope for him. There’s still hope for him to be normal and happy and have all the things he’s ever wanted.

But that’s just the thing. Paul’s drunk himself so deep, he doesn’t know how much all of that would be worth it if it wasn’t John next to him.

“Maybe I would,” Paul tells him honestly, but with something deeper, he says: “Maybe I wouldn’t.”

John’s eyes bore into his and he hears what Paul’s really saying:  _ I’d do with a partner like you too _ .

“You know,” John presses gently. He sounds so serious, Paul realizes that John’s probably not had anything to drink besides that glass of champagne they’d had together after the ceremony. “Marriage, it…” He shrugs. “It can mean so many different things.” Paul nods. “But it’s really just about two people deciding to love each other every day. And maybe I’ll be with someone I’d like to take to the courthouse someday, maybe I won’t, I don’t know… I just… I just want to love someone every day.”

Paul suddenly sees John forty years from now, still in love without any legal proof of it, feeling just as pent-up and angry about it as he does now. It fills him with something so sad. He just wants John to have someone to love every day too. It’s the soft life that he deserves. He sees John, telling him that Cynthia’s the only woman he’s ever loved, the only woman he might ever love in his life, and he feels hopeless about it. He wishes John felt safe enough with him to tell him how afraid he was about losing that hard, straight, strong image of himself that he’d spent all the years after his Uncle George died building and building, over and over again, every time he foolishly had let it crumble down to nothing. 

He’s exposed to his core, and Paul realizes he loves him that way, anyway. He wants to tell him how beautiful he is: soft around the edges and scared about it, asking to be loved even though the answer terrifies him. 

“I want that for you too,” Paul tells him, because he realizes he wants  _ that _ more than he could ever want something for himself. 

The unspoken thing lives between them:  _ I want it to be with you _ , and Paul wonders why neither of them will say it. It hurts somewhere deep inside of him, that something so tangible and pure and gratifying can’t also be fundamentally transformative. 

John smiles his gratitude, but he also smiles his utter understanding that they’re still exactly where they’d started. And that hurts him too. They go so quiet that Paul can hear the song the band is playing. It’s something by The Ronettes, slowed down, meant for dancing. 

“I love this song,” John tells him. 

Paul glances out across the back garden. It’s a clear night; there’s moonlight in the grass, crystal and sleek up until where the lights from the party spill out, golden-warm, to meet it. Somewhere beyond them, there are glasses coming together in a toast. He feels himself go soft. Something warm bursts in his chest. He realizes that they’re hiding, that they’re here in secret, the way loving one another would always have to be, but he wants to give John that quiet love he’s so desperately craving. So, he stands, holds his hand out to John and says: “Dance with me, then.”

John gapes up at him. Something of a dry laugh escapes him. “Cor, you  _ are _ drunk,” he mutters. 

“I know what I’m doing,” Paul promises him. “You love the song,” he explains. “Dance with me.”

John glances over his shoulder towards the tent, the party still going on behind them, but it must not frighten him. Paul’s willingness to  _ be here _ with him, private and loving, must trump that. 

“Only because you’ve asked so nicely,” he mumbles, lifting himself to his feet. He sets his hand in Paul’s and lets Paul tug him closer. 

It’s awkward at first, when they realize they’ve never done this with one another, not in any serious sense. It takes a moment for both of them to not break into some daft waltz instead. John smiles because he knows Paul’s caught him thinking about breaking this moment with a joke. Instead, he just sighs and lets himself sway to the music, to a song that he loves. 

John slots himself closer to Paul; Paul can feel his breath against the side of his throat. It makes him flush. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Paul holds him close because it’s the sort of thing he never wants to let slip through his fingers. 

Paul realizes how safe he feels, tucked away, beyond the twinkling party lights, doused in moonlight. He feels so much love around him that nothing seems to exist outside of it. A wedding has fallen away around them: all that’s left is music and love. He hopes that’s all John feels around him too. Paul closes his eyes and he can see himself here, like this, forever. Nothing exists outside of this moment. And maybe, he realizes there’s something quite naive or unhealthy about denying the truth of the hurt between the two of them, but maybe they can allow themselves a moment like this to make up for all the years they’ve spent missing one another. 

The song ends and John steps slightly backward, but he keeps his hand in Paul’s. He doesn’t want to leave, same as Paul. Finally, he looks up at Paul and smiles something fond. He seems to blush then he pulls away and smooths out the front of his suit. 

“We should go back to the party,” he says, his voice quiet and hoarse, like his throat’s gone raw with all the words he isn’t saying. “Before I decide I’d like to kiss you,” he admits affectionately. 

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” Paul says back, sounding like a bloody teenager again, desperate to have John back close to him. It  _ wouldn’t _ be so bad, but they both know: if they let themselves kiss one another, it would lead to so much more. It would open a dam and neither of them really know what the deluge might be. 

John regards him; his smile says so much: it’s a soft no, but it doesn’t say  _ never _ . Out loud, all he says is: “Get your head out of the gutter.” He turns and heads back towards the tent. Paul knows he’s meant to follow,  _ wants to _ more than anything. He takes the first steps at a jog to catch up to John, then wraps himself around John’s arm. Slowly, his hands trace down John’s forearm, towards his hand, until Paul’s able to interlock their fingers together. 

John glances down, then back at Paul. Paul sees that he’d like to say:  _ don’t stop _ , and  _ what are you doing? _ all at once. Paul decides he doesn’t want to make him say anything. He wants him to just feel that love, so he promises: “I’ll let go before anybody sees us.” John nods graciously, but Paul doesn’t miss the way he clings tighter, just until they come up on the thick white plastic of the rented party tent. 

John tugs them to a halt just before the moment they both know that they’ll have to let go. They hold still there for a moment; John peers up at him through his glasses. He looks like he’s about to say,  _ I love you _ , so he sets his jaw, inhales deeply, then leans forward and presses his lips to Paul’s. Paul closes his eyes to it and just lets John kiss him. He’s saying so much with it all that Paul finds he can’t pinpoint any of it. He wonders what this means, what this changes. 

There’s champagne still swirling inside of him, so decides he’ll articulate it when he’s sounder. He decides he’ll articulate it, he’ll ask about it, so John doesn’t have to. It’s always John first; Paul wants to let him rest. He reaches out and tucks John’s hair behind his ear; he wants to see the gold of his eyes, the gold of his freckles, the gold of everything about him. 

“Good to know all it takes is a proper dance,” Paul says. 

John gives him a gentle shove, rolling his eyes, and says: “It was just a kiss, Paul. Not like I’ve put out.” It makes Paul laugh; the crudeness of it, the denigration. It fits the both of them perfectly. John shoves him again, then turns on his heel and heads back into the party before Paul can stop him, before he can hold his hand again, before they can lose themselves to another kiss. 

Paul follows him into the throes of dancers. His hands itch to reach out and touch him. He realizes he’s smiling, even without meaning to. His scanning eyes find Mike and Angie, still dancing with one another, looking content and sleepy. Mike smiles back at him, just happy to see Paul the way he always remembers him: light, jovial, and radiating love. 

He and John spend the night in their separate rooms, but Paul spends those waking hours thinking of John. He hopes John does the same. 

\--

The house is still quiet when Paul opens his eyes the following morning. Soft sunlight pours in through the opened window. The headache he has reminds him of all the glasses of champagne he’d had the night before, but he isn’t put off that he’d never drawn the curtains, the way he usually is when he’s too sloshed to remember. The sunlight feels warm against his cheek; he knows it must still be early. 

He rolls over onto one side, glances at the clock hanging up on the wall. It reminds him of his trip here with Jane. It makes him smile, how much things seem to have changed since then. Deep down somewhere, in his heart, he feels fuller than the last time he’d stared at these ticking hands. He swings his legs over one side of the bed, his head swimming in a hangover, but it just makes him laugh at himself. He’d drunk himself into a low and John had pulled him out of it so easily that it’s hard to believe it had even happened. 

It’s still quiet, even as he takes the stairs down towards the kitchen. There’s a pot of coffee still on the stove, so he helps himself to a cup, before he finally hears voices somewhere outside. He steps towards the back door, peers through the sheer curtains out into the back garden and sees that it’s John and his father, sharing cups of coffee of their own. His first instinct is to rush out and make sure neither of them are saying anything petty or cruel, but then John laughs, his mug of coffee nearly to his lips. 

He looks so at ease that it seems to rub off on Paul. He stays where he is and just watches the two of them. John makes Jim laugh back in turn and Paul thinks about what John had told him yesterday:  _ The McCartney clan doesn’t scare me _ , but it suddenly feels like more than that. It feels like he loves them. 

He’s beautiful. He wonders if his father can finally see the good things in him. The love, the humour. His hair’s pulled back into a knot at the base of his neck. Loose strands fall out around his ears. He’s gained some weight back, but he holds himself differently now. He isn’t pulled taut, showing off that chip on his shoulder. He shifts himself on the garden furniture, but it’s something graceful and ethereal; Paul finds himself watching John’s hands, seeming to hold onto the mug in his hands with just his fingertips. It’s something dainty and sweet and he wonders when exactly he’d started to think of John this way. 

As kids, John had been hard and frightful. He’d been all hard edges and rancor. He’d gone soft somewhere along the way. Though, Paul supposes, that softness had always been there, Liverpool had just never allowed him to show it. 

He suddenly wonders if Stuart had seen John this way then, back when John refused to show it to anyone in the light of day. Stuart had always been soft; Paul was the first to tell him that to his face. He realizes he was soft the way John had clearly always wanted to be soft. Maybe it hadn’t just been Liverpool that hadn’t let him be that way. Paul wants to tell him he’s beautiful. He wants to tell him that he’s thought that since they met. He wants John to feel safe in this new softness. He wants him to feel like he’s gained something by allowing himself to be this way, rather than losing the version of himself he’d once been. 

He pushes through the back door. The creaking hinges are enough to make both John and his father turn to look towards him. His father leans back in his seat, smiling, and John just  _ beams _ . It makes something set right behind Paul’s ribcage. 

“Morning,” he mutters as he heads their way. 

John moves to stand himself up, muttering to Jim: “That’s my cue,” then he heads towards Paul and for a moment, Paul thinks he might kiss him, but then he says: “I was wondering when you’d get up. I’ve been keeping my car waiting,” and it makes that bright thing inside of him deflate. 

“Oh,” he manages. “You’re leaving right now?”

John nods, shrugging, like there isn’t anything he can do about it, and Paul supposes that there isn’t. He’d always planned to leave early this morning and Mimi Smith was never one for changing anything on the fly. “The car’s been here for an hour,” he says, guessing at that number as he glances down at his wristwatch. “I oughta relieve ‘im.”

“Okay,” Paul says, glancing back to Jim. He doesn’t want to say  _ thank you _ in front of his father, he doesn’t want to say  _ something’s been right inside me again after you’ve kissed me _ in front of his father. He sighs, something short and sad, then offers: “I’ll help you with your bags,” even though they both know John hasn’t got enough with him to warrant two people. He nods anyway, and it makes Paul wonder if he’s got something he’d like to say in private, too. 

He realizes that John’s already brought his bag down to the kitchen. It’s been thrown in a pile against one of the legs of the kitchen table. John lifts it up, slings it over his shoulder, then turns to Paul, smiling shyly. “You don’t have to walk me out, Macca,” he says. “I know the way.”

Paul just shrugs, then decides to tell him the truth: “You should have woken me up. I would have liked to have breakfast.”

“Oh,” John says back, the thought genuinely not having occurred to him. “You’re not usually one to rouse when you’ve had something to drink,” he says, his tone going softer and teasing as he goes.

Paul rolls his eyes at him, but it makes him smile, mostly because by the time John’s finished speaking, he’s grinning at him. “I didn’t have so much,” he defends. 

“How do you feel?”

Paul scoffs, then allows: “I need an aspirin.”

John nods triumphantly, knowing he was right to leave Paul be. “I’ll call you when I get in. How’s that?” he offers. “You’ll have to go two hours without hearing my lovely voice.”

“Too long,” Paul counters, grabbing John’s jacket from one of the hooks at the front door. 

“There’s no pleasing you,” he says back, sticking his arm through one of the holes when Paul holds it open for him. Paul watches him twist into the other arm fondly, then, still as he picks his bag back up and sighs happily. Paul gives him a little nod, one that says it all:  _ goodbye, I love you, you look good _ . John glances through the little window next to the front door, seeing the car outside waiting for him. He looks as though he suddenly doesn’t want to go. 

“Wish me luck,” he says. 

“It’s just Mimi,” Paul tells him. 

“Yeah,” John says back, though he sounds sadder than Paul thinks he ought to. He feels something like dread sit like a stone in his stomach. He watches John turn and grab at the doorknob and suddenly wants to ask  _ why _ he’s heading to see her anyway. When he doesn’t want to,  _ why _ is he going? He suddenly wants to stop him, wants to tell him to stay here, to stay safe, and John looks like he might want him to do it. 

“You’ll call me when you’re back in London?” John asks. 

“You know I will,” Paul answers. 

John nods, grateful for the reassurance, no matter how small it might feel. He opens the door, moves to take a step, then pauses. Paul holds his breath, thinks:  _ stay, stay, stay _ , then John steps back towards him and gives him a kiss on the cheek. It isn’t  _ staying _ , but it’s something. For this moment, it’s enough. It’s enough to get them both through back to London. Then, he’s out the door, and it’s closed between them. Paul watches him through the frosted glass. He watches him speaking with the driver, watches him toss his bag into the boot and then climb into the backseat. He watches the car pull out of the drive and all he can think is:  _ I wish you’d stayed _ . 

His father is still out in the back garden when he steps back outside. He holds his mug of coffee up to his son as a ‘hello’. Paul joins him on the garden furniture and sighs as though the weight of the world was on top of him. He can feel Jim watching him as he scans the yard, sees the remnants of a lovely party, sees the hidden spot where he’d danced with John only a few hours ago. 

“Are you alright, son?” Jim asks him, though he’s afraid he probably already knows the answer. 

Paul sighs, curls a bit in on himself and deflects the question. He says: “I drank too much last night. I’m sorry.” He sees Jim shake his head at him out of the corner of his eyes. “Could anybody tell?”

“No,” Jim tells him, allowing him the deflection. “You held it quite well.”

“Good,” Paul concludes. 

“He’s grown up since the last time I’ve seen him,” Jim suddenly observes, meaning John. Paul glances at him, wondering what the observation really means. He shrugs, conceding that that’s probably true, though he supposes it should go without saying. Jim hasn’t seen him properly since John was twenty-three. “I never thought I’d say it, but he sounds like he’s got a head on his shoulders.”

Paul laughs and feels himself relax a bit. He leans back further against the patio furniture and sips at his coffee. “I’ll have to tell him you said that.”

Jim laughs back, shrugging. “He’ll know it’s a deep compliment.” Paul nods and they fall into a comfortable silence. For a moment, Paul thinks that might be it. He thinks they might just sit here, enjoying one another’s companionable thoughtfulness, but then Jim says: “He thinks it’s you making him better.”

Paul feels the breath hitch in his throat. He looks at his father, desperately searching for where that might not be true, where he might be exaggerating, but he isn’t. Paul looks his father in the face and realizes he’s simply said John’s words back to him. 

“He said that?” Paul manages. 

Jim nods. Then, he sits up a little straighter. “You know,” he starts sincerely. “I know I always told you that he was trouble. That I didn’t like the two of you together. But I could always tell he’d be alright if people just showed him a little more love.” Paul nods, because he knows he’s right, and he suddenly wonders if that was when he’d started to describe John as soft and sweet: when he’d finally been shown enough love. “And I could see how much he meant to you. Even when you were kids. I think I was just afraid of what you’d give up to show him that love.”

Paul thinks of the life he might have had if he’d never met John. He’d be a teacher, probably, playing the piano at some pub somewhere every Saturday to satisfy the itch left behind by giving up his music. He wonders if he would have kept writing songs anyway. He wonders who he might have married: a nice girl he’d have fallen in love with by nineteen -- three kids by twenty-five, a full life despite something stark missing. He wonders if he’d ever have been able to define himself without John there as a mirror. 

“I didn’t give up anything I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t known him,” he says, but he doesn’t believe that’s true. 

He’d seen John just as his father had: abandoned, angry, and broken. He realizes he doesn’t even  _ know _ what else he might have given up for John, even if they hadn’t become Beatles. If they’d never left Liverpool, Paul would have gone hungry to play music with John. Despite it being a lie, Jim nods, allowing themselves both the opportunity to ignore the versions of themselves that hadn’t been blessed by fame and money and art. 

“I think he’s right, anyroad,” Jim says, deciding to really say what he’d meant to. “I see you making him better.”

Paul shakes his head, almost unconsciously. It’s so quick a reaction that he hears his father tut at him, at his perceived modesty. But it isn’t about modesty, it’s simply about truth. The things making John better were the things he was deciding to do to make himself better. He was building himself into a man people were proud to know, even square fathers who’d seen you as nothing more than an overdramatic teenager. John was becoming better because he was taking tangible steps towards making that his reality. 

He suddenly thinks of John at one of his psychologist sessions, desperately afraid of being found out as some neurotic, but there anyway, for the sake of his son and the woman he’d once loved. 

“He’s doing all that himself,” Paul says. 

“Maybe,” Jim allows. “But it’s your love behind him. Maybe that’s all he means.” Paul looks to him, his eyes wide and uncertain. He wonders just how much John has told his father. Does he know about the two of them? Does he  _ know _ how much Paul loves him? “You’d be surprised what your love can do for a person.” 

Paul keeps his eyes on his father, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for him to reveal what he knows, but he does no such thing, and Paul’s met with the immovable truth: his father knows how much he loves his best friend. He knows it whether John’s told him or not.

Still, he has to ask: “Did John tell you about us?” his voice ashamed and quiet, like it would go when he’d been a kid and had been afraid of getting into trouble. Jim sighs, he shakes his head, but his eyes are deeply sympathetic. He’d pieced the clues together, maybe just this morning with John in front of him, maybe the last time Paul had come here and John had called for him. Paul doesn’t know when he figured it out, all that matters is that he has, and it lifts this weight off of him. “No,” he mutters, “but you know about us, anyway.”

“He always meant so much to you,” Jim offers gently.

Paul nods in agreement because he realizes he doesn’t have the right words to fully articulate what it is that John means to him. He supposes he’s spent the last ten years desperately trying to put it into his music, and every time, it would always come out just slightly wrong. Just not quite enough. 

He supposes he should tell his father that they aren’t actually together, that loving one another didn’t automatically mean that things could be easy. His father must know, he must see it on his face, because he leans forward in his seat, he reaches out and puts a reassuring hand at the crook of Paul’s neck and sighs in that way that only fathers can. It says: even though you’re sad, I’m here. It says: no matter how hard things feel, your father will always love you. 

He suddenly wants to tell his Dad that he doesn’t know what to do, that life isn’t fair, that the universe was out to get _ him _ , personally. He hates how petulant and self-pitying he feels, but he realizes his father’s opened this door for him. He didn’t have to, but he did it, anyway, simply because he saw his son in pain. He wants to tell him:  _ protect me! _ But he isn’t a fool, and he’d learned when he was fourteen that his father couldn’t stop the things that hurt him the most, nobody could. 

“I love him so much I don’t know what to do with it all,” he finally admits. He realizes he doesn’t know where to put it because the world around them won’t let them put it where they want to. It wouldn’t allow them to hold hands, smile at one another the wrong way, or kiss in public; all it would allow is the private moments that they could share behind a locked door, hidden away in a house with  _ nobody _ else inside, nobody that could be corrupted by the still-shameful thing that they did with one another. “It isn’t fair,” he says before he can stop himself. 

“I wish I could make this go away for you,” Jim tells him, sounding as though he feels like he’s failed. He  _ hasn’t _ , Paul knows he hasn’t, he knows he should tell his father he hasn’t, but he can’t open his mouth, he can’t speak through the realization that it isn’t just John’s love that couldn’t change the world around them, it was everyone’s: it was his father’s, it was Jane’s, and George’s and Ringo’s. All that love was there, but it couldn’t drown out the hatred that made him feel like he had to burrow underground. 

It devastates him. He thinks of John in the back of a car somewhere and wishes he could have him back.


	8. chapter eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's too, too much to note here!
> 
> Just a bit of a warning: this is the beginning of Paul realizing how traumatized he actually is by being outed. It's never really called PTSD since that wasn't really something this era would have put onto an experience like this, but the symptoms he's experiencing are akin to it, so, warning for that. 
> 
> Also, there's a not-great coming-out story here. Actually, one for Brian and one for John, too. So, if you'd like to skip either of them, go for it. Brian's is really just mentioned in passing when he visits the boys in the studio. John's is much more drawn-out. It's just him telling the story, not it happening firsthand, but it's definitely a little emotionally rough. It happens when Paul and John meet up late at night for a few drinks. 
> 
> It's really tough to show just how much work John is trying to put into himself at the moment. But, just to keep in mind: he's still doing his counselling with Cynthia and topping that off with individual sessions that are getting more into his own personal issues, rather than through the lens of his marriage ending. He talks more about it in coming chapters, so it'll be more at our forefront, but yeah, just wanted to remind all that that's his main motivation for all of the choices he makes in this chapter. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoy the update! As always, join me over on tumblr @orphanbeat!

It shouldn’t be the way, but Paul supposes he just gets used to the probing journalists and scruffs always waiting for him at the entrance to EMI. He starts to give them proper answers; or, at least, his voice doesn’t quake as he tells them he’d prefer to talk about the music. Sometimes, they  _ do _ ask him about the album, or the others. Those days, he’ll come into the studio breathing properly and can fool George Martin into thinking that everything is fine outside in the car park, beyond it out on the streets of London, too. 

His first morning at the studio after Mike’s wedding up north, they ask him if there’s another film being planned any time soon, they ask if there’s a name for the album, and Paul answers them courteously, even though the answer to both questions is a simple ‘no’. He offers them a smile and wave as he steps in through the glass double-doors and thinks:  _ it’s good that I’m this happy _ , because he thinks of John and wants to tell him all over again how much he loves him, how much he wants to be with him, and he doesn’t want to be afraid about it, he doesn’t want to push John into anything; he just wants to be happy about it. 

Except, when he steps into the studio, John isn’t there. He glances at Rings, turning the screws in his drum kit back to his liking, and George too, tightening the strap of his Telecaster. They offer smiles and nods, familiar and friendly, but Paul’s only got one thing on his mind: “Where’s John?” he asks. 

Rich doesn’t seem to have an answer, so Paul looks back to George, who shrugs, opens his mouth to give some soft answer, but he’s beaten to it, by George Martin over the P.A. system. 

“Morning, lads,” he says, chipper in that sort of way a boss always is at the top of the day. “That’s us for today.” Paul means to protest; even Ringo puts his drum sticks down and steps closer to the recording booth window, as if that might demand an explanation. “John’s not coming today, he’s taken ill,” George says, then he leans away from the microphone and chats idly with one of the engineers.

_ Ill? _ Paul thinks. He’d been fine last time Paul saw him. He supposes that’s how illness generally works, but he thinks John might have called him, at the very least, to complain about how shite he feels. He turns back to George and Rich and asks: “He didn’t call either of you?”

“Nope,” George offers sullenly. 

“Me neither,” Ringo agrees. 

Paul has half a mind to go find a telephone himself, but then there are engineers stepping into the studio; Mal is after them, too with a tray of tea and water. He smiles at them all, tells them all good morning, and nobody seems concerned, so Paul’s left wondering why he is at all. He watches Mal set down the tea tray, then he immediately picks up one of George’s guitars and fixes the snapped B-string. 

Paul hears John through the tapes in his headphones; it’s like he’s there, anyway: well and happy and  _ loud _ . The album’s purer rock and roll; he thinks it was probably done both consciously and unconsciously. Most, if not all, of the songs had been written on various beat-up acoustic guitars in Rishikesh, so they all came out sounding natural and basic. Paul realizes that, if they cut a few songs away, they’d probably be able to record the whole thing themselves, no need for other studio musicians, or an orchestra, just the four of them wailing away. 

He feels the strongest sense of togetherness when he’s here with these four men; the closest friends he’s ever had and likely will ever have. He feels definitively protected within these four walls and he realizes it’s because they’ve all surrounded themselves with so much love that there wasn’t any room for anything else, or, at least, that he didn’t want to allow any more room for anything else. George is across the microphone from him, smiling out the side of his mouth as he sings, and Paul feels this warm fondness work its way up from his belly and rest just so in his chest. 

He thinks of George when they’d first met one another: gangly and shy, but with this edge of cool and stoic kindness that was never too far beneath his teddy veneer. He thinks of George bringing ‘round the leftovers of his mother’s roast dinners because George had somehow wrestled it out of him that that was the meal he missed most after Mary died. Jim’s wasn’t so bad; it was just different, and  _ just different _ enough to shed too much light and who’s exactly they’d all prefer to be eating. 

George quietly eased him through the hardest tragedy he’d had to endure as a teen boy, through actions that showed his love more than ever just saying it could. He thinks he could probably count on one hand how many times they’ve said ‘I love you’ to one another, but he thinks that that must be more of a testament to the sort of man  _ he _ is, rather than the sort George is. George would say it more, if he thought Paul would want to hear it, or would want to say something back. 

There’s so much going on behind his ribcage, always has done; he wishes he found it easy to translate it all into the words, the way he could translate it all into music. He thinks he could write a song for George that might mean everything to him, but it wouldn’t mean so much George, who, like John, would prefer to just be shown, or to  _ hear it _ , in words. 

He thinks of the version of himself as a boy, staring back at his own reflection in the mirror, devastatingly sad, urging himself to bury it all, demanding something palatable to stare back at him, rather than something that might make people feel sorry for him, or uncomfortable, or just plain lonely by proxy. He thinks of that boy who’d grown up into this man who was just deathly afraid of  _ saying it _ , whatever  _ it _ was. The man who had become that palatable reflection, even when it hurt to be so. And he doesn’t want to be that reflection anymore. He wants to be the sort that tells George he’s sorry when he is, that tells John he loves him when he does, that says:  _ thank you _ , and  _ I need help _ , and  _ I’ll never leave you _ whenever any of those things are true. 

“I’ve been a twat to you,” Paul tells George when they have a moment alone and all the mics have been switched off. George looks up at him, puzzled and aching to say: when,  _ exactly _ ? Because he’s got a few examples in his head, but he’s too kind to bring any of them up. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’ve just wanted to help me, and I haven’t let you.”

George sighs; he’s as familiar with the reflection of Paul as Paul is, anyway. 

“It’s alright, really,” he mutters. Paul holds his breath, because there’s more to come. He chews on his cheek when George says: “But…” He sighs again, frustrated with himself, and Paul realizes it isn’t that George just  _ says it _ and that it comes easier to him than it ever does to Paul; he feels that wall up inside him, too, he just  _ chooses _ to knock it down. “I just really think you’d feel better if you’d just say what was bothering you.” Paul nods, though he feels himself clamming up about it. “And I don’t have to ask, either. You can just say it, you know?”

“Yeah, I know --”

“Because it isn’t right,” George says over him. “What’s happened to you. And if you feel that way too, you should tell me that. Or,  _ can _ , or whatever.”

“Okay,” Paul answers.

The weak answer makes George exhale pointedly. He looks like he might shake his head, but he pushes through anyway. “Are you angry?” he asks, hoping to guide Paul any direction other than the one he’s currently taking.

“I don’t know,” Paul mumbles. 

“Are you sad?” George tries again. Paul feels George getting annoyed with him and it makes him wire his mouth shut. He doesn’t dare shrug, though he’d like to, so George presses him: “Are you  _ scared _ ?”

And he feels that little black box inside of him crack open slightly. It stings, like a sore in your mouth that won’t go away. It feels as though there are alarm bells going off in his head; his hands itch to fiddle on his guitar, he wishes he hadn’t put it down. He rubs at the back of his neck instead, though he must be too rough about it, because George leans towards him and his eyes are wide and sympathetic. 

“I don’t know that I’m scared,” Paul manages, though his voice comes out ragged with the effort of it. “Nothing’s  _ happened _ ,” he says. “Nobody’s tried to hurt me, or, or  _ threatened _ to, or anything like that.” George shakes his head, though Paul knows what he’s thinking: those aren’t the only things he can be afraid of. “But sometimes it feels like someone has, you know?” George nods, encouraging him, though he looks like he might not understand what he means. Paul goes a bit red, because he realizes he feels just like he did when he’d come home with shite grade or a bout of detention, or like when he and Mike had broken one of Mum’s table lamps playing football in the sitting room. He realizes he feels like his father’s about to hit him, and it’s all the more shameful because George  _ doesn’t _ know what that feels like. He wouldn’t  _ ever  _ know what that feels like. But he’s looking at Paul and his eyes are telling him:  _ please try anyway _ . So, Paul does, because every instinct inside of him is telling him not to, they’re all telling him to shy away from it, to bury it, to smile and be something people like to look at. He says: “It’s like, you get tense all over, like you’re trying to protect yourself from something.” He takes a deep breath and hears himself shake with it. “I feel my body reacting to something and I don’t know what it is.” George hums thoughtfully, caught somewhere between not understanding and being keenly aware that this is a friend asking for help in front of him. 

He opens his mouth to speak, then the door to the studio is pushed open and it’s Brian heading in to see them. It’s enough of a shock to see him here that they both lean away from one another, feeling caught in something private. Before Brian gets too close, George reaches out and gives Paul’s sleeve a smart tug and tells him: “I think maybe you should talk to Brian about all this.”

“You what?” Paul says through a tight laugh. 

George shrugs. “I’m just saying,” he mumbles, and Paul’s left wondering how many times in his life George has been wrong about something like this. It feels low enough to try. Either way, Brian’s too close for him to start questioning George’s reasoning now, so instead, he just smiles at Brian, sees that he’s come bearing coffees. 

He looks slightly flustered, but he hands Paul his double-cream and gently squeezes his elbow as he does so. “Hello, boys,” he says, to no one in particular, handing George a second cup. 

“This is a nice surprise,” Ringo says, accepting his own coffee from behind his kit. 

Brian smiles at him placatingly, before George asks: “Yeah, what for?” From anyone else, it might sound suspicious, but from George, it just serves as testament to how well they know one another. Brian shrugs casually and says: “Oh, I need a reason to be generous, now?”

George just shrugs, lifting the lid off his cup to inspect that the coffee’s been made to his liking. It must be, because he smiles fondly, replaces the lid and sips at it. Paul thinks he doesn’t need a reason to be generous, no, but he does generally need a reason to be at the studio. And it isn’t business, because he doesn’t fuss like he usually does, doesn’t ask about how they’re keeping on schedule. He goes up to the recording booth and says his hellos to George Martin and the engineers, then he comes back downstairs and just watches them play. Like a fan might. 

They finish a take and he looks as though he needs to restrain himself from clapping his hands. He looks proud of them, Paul realizes; that comes through to him suddenly and purely. Brian sees them all with just as much magic and awe as he had in 1961. Maybe even more now. Because they weren’t just charming and talented performers, they were grown men, capable of love and softness and bravery that no one ever gave them enough credit for. 

Brian joins him in the canteen while George works on his solo. He feels good and tired, as he should after a hard day’s work. Brain fixes them both a cup of tea, then sits opposite him at one of the linoleum tables. Paul smiles at him, but sees Brian watching something over his shoulder. Twisting in his seat, he sees one of the receptionists grabbing herself a sandwich. 

Brian smiles at her politely as she walks past them, then he leans forward and touches his fingertips to the backside of Paul’s hand, wrapped tightly around the mug in front of him. “How have you been holding up?” he asks, still keeping his voice quiet, as though they haven’t got the room to themselves. 

“Oh,” Paul says, floundering at the sudden care being directed his way. “Well, fine, really,” he says.

Brian studies him a moment; Paul gets the distinct impression that he doesn’t believe him. Same as George. And they shouldn’t, not really. He nods anyway, playing the gullible, unaware part quite well. “That’s good,” he mutters. He stirs his spoon around in his tea aimlessly. “I heard about your brother’s wedding,” Brian suddenly says; he must be changing course after Paul’s given him an answer he doesn’t like. “You ought to have told me, I would have written a card, or passed along a gift.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do something like that --”

“John thought you might have been having a hard time,” he says. Paul goes still. He sees Brian and John together again, in his mind, and hates that he has, hates that he feels somehow entitled to never think of them that way again. 

“It felt strange being back with my family,” he admits, though he’d really just like to ask  _ why _ Brian’s spoke to John about any of this. “It was the first time seeing a lot of them since… Since everything’s come out about me.” Brian nods sympathetically. Before he can say anything else, Paul asks him: “How’s John, then? Is it a bit of flu, or something?”

“He’ll be alright,” Brian tells him vaguely. “He’d actually like you to call him when you’re finished tonight. That’s why I’ve come,” he confesses, finally giving up the guise of being here just because he’d like to be. Brian’s eyes flicker up from his tea and they stay on Paul. Paul thinks it ought to feel like they’re having a silent conversation, just by looking at one another, but it mostly just makes him feel like Brian knows something he doesn’t. 

“I could call him now,” Paul offers. 

“No, no,” Brian presses, waving off the idea. “He isn’t expecting you ‘till much later,” he explains. “He may be out with Cynthia, he said he’d been planning to see her.”

“So, not flu, then?” Paul asks. 

Brian smiles at him tersely, ignores the question and sips at his tea. 

“I remember,” he muses. “The first time seeing my extended family after my mother had told them all about me.” Paul swallows hard, his eyes sliding back downs towards his mug. He feels Brian watching him. “It was at a wedding as well, actually,” he adds with a humourless laugh. Paul smiles because he knows it’s polite to, but he keeps his eyes downcast. “I found the whole thing quite traumatizing,” he confesses. 

Paul looks up at him, shocked by the truth of it, the candor with which he’d said it and that word:  _ traumatizing _ . It fills this empty space inside of him that he hadn’t even known was there. He sighs heavily and nods, agreeing with the sentiment. 

“Were they cruel to you?” Brian asks. He’s both gentle and fierce with it. 

“No,” Paul says quickly, shaking his head at the idea, because they  _ weren’t _ , in fact, his family has been the best part of this whole experience. They’d continued to love him as they always had, maybe even more now that they were seeing every part of him. He feels his father’s love like a blanket over him, his brother and new sister as well. They hadn’t been cruel; not the way Brian’s had been. “No, my family’s all been very understanding about it all,” he says, and Brian just nods, gracious for that reality, without even a tinge of jealousy. “I just…” He sighs heavily. “When you said you found it traumatizing, I just…” He doesn’t want to say:  _ something clicked _ , because then he’d have to admit that something’s been wrong. He trails off, gesturing vaguely at himself, meaning to say that that word had found home somewhere inside of him without having to actually say anything at all. 

Brian hears him anyway. He leans forward, and this time, he puts both hands on Paul’s. He nods reassuringly and Paul realizes that George had been right. “Something happens to us when we’re taught to live our lives in shame,” Brian tells him. Paul nods. He feels his eyes go glassy so he both desperately wants to pull his hands away from Brian’s to hide behind them and graciously clings to the only lifeline being offered to him. “But something also happens to us when we’re torn out of that shame before we’re ready to.” Paul nods again, emphatically, because he realizes he doesn’t actually have to  _ say it _ , not when he’s got a man in front of him who understands him down to his bones. “There were rumours about me in Liverpool before I was ready for anybody to know,” Brian tells him. “That these rumours were based in the truth made it all the more horrible,” he adds with an awful, sad laugh. He breathes deeply, hoping Paul will do the same. “It’s traumatizing for any homosexual to have to reveal their secrets. Some are lucky to do so in an environment that is safe and loving. Some,” he continues, giving Paul’s hands a squeeze, meaning  _ him, you _ . “Some are not so lucky.” Slowly, Brian starts to stand and he rounds the table to sit down in the seat directly next to Paul. “The world is watching you go through the hardest thing I hope you’ll ever have to go through.” He reaches out and sets a hand against one of Paul’s cheeks. “That’s allowed to terrify you.”

“Do you ever stop being afraid?” Paul asks him, though he doesn’t want an honest answer. 

Brian smiles at him sadly and he knows that the truth isn’t what he’s looking for. Instead, he drops his hand away from Paul’s face, he reaches out and straightens out the collar of his shirt. “Why don’t you come away with me to Los Angeles?” Paul furrows his brow at him. “You could do without prying eyes for a few days.”

“When?”

“Next weekend,” Brian answers. “I have a meeting with  _ Capitol _ , but we’ll find something quiet, out of town. I’ll have Nat find us something nice.”

Paul nods, thinking of himself that day in Brian’s office, the day that he’d decided he wanted to run away to Greece. He realizes he must look just as afraid now as he had then, or Brian wouldn’t have offered. It makes him blush, that Brian has seen him so closely, but he likes the idea too much to let it slip through the cracks. 

“Alright,” he tells him. He ignores the thought that the last time Brian took any of them away, all it got them was a rumour of its own. 

\--

It’s just after midnight by the time Paul gets back to Cavendish; he takes the stars up towards his music room two at a time. Even though he’s alone, he shuts the door behind him and dials John’s new number. John answers on the third ring; he doesn’t sound as though he’s been sleeping, but he does sound exhausted. 

“It’s me,” Paul tells him, and he can hear the sigh of relief on the other line. “Eppy said you wanted me to call?”

“Can we meet?” John asks, not mincing words. 

“Can we meet?” Paul repeats. “John, it’s nearly one in the morning,” he says, wondering why he couldn’t have just come into work so they could have spoken then. 

“ _ The Clifton _ is still open isn’t it?” John asks. “One drink,” he promises. 

Paul sighs. “One drink,” he agrees. “Though,” he adds. “I hope this doesn’t mean you’ll be too tired to come into work tomorrow.”

“Ha,” John answers sarcastically and he’s off the line before Paul can say anything back. 

Feeling sluggish after a long day’s recording, he walks the short distance to  _ The Clifton _ . It isn’t far for either of them. But most importantly, it’s a bit of a hole, which means it’s usually quiet and pints are so cheap your pockets hardly feel any lighter. It’s the cheap Scouser in the both of them that digs it. 

John is already there by the time Paul arrives. He’s halfway through a cigarette and the tray in front of him is half-stuffed, so Paul figures it isn’t his first. There’s already a pint in front of the seat Paul’s meant to take. They always order the same thing when they come here, so Paul isn’t surprised. He just takes a seat and sips at the foam at the top of the glass. It’s still pretty cold, so John hasn’t been here long. 

“You beat me,” Paul observes once he’s comfortable. 

“Needed the drink, I suppose,” John allows and takes a long pull of his pint to prove it. He looks agitated enough as it is, so Paul doesn’t comment on the fact that this looks like the old John Lennon come back to haunt them both: angry, coiled, and raring to get pissed. 

“What’s up?” Paul asks, shuffling his seat deeper beneath the table. He rests all of his weight down on his elbows, leaning towards John. John chews on the inside of his cheek. He looks right ready to just clam up, so Paul rambles: “First you miss work and now you’ve got me out for some incognito pints.” He shrugs helplessly when John glances up at him, but doesn’t offer any answers. So, Paul picks the worst case scenario. “Are you embarrassed that we’ve kissed again?” It’s dead enough inside that neither are particularly worried about being overheard. 

John groans, rolling his eyes. “No,” he says definitively. “Christ, no. It isn’t that.”

“Then, what is it?” Paul asks. John sighs again, so Paul reaches out and taps at his wrist. “Johnny?” he implores. 

“I’ve got to tell you something,” John blusters. “But I don’t quite know how.”

“Alright,” Paul allows gently. He lets his expression go open. He leans backward, giving John as much time and space as he needs. “Well, whatever it is, you know I won’t care.”

“No,” John agrees. “I don’t think you’ll care, it just… Well, I don’t know how to say it,” he says again, going red with it. He takes another gulping mouthful of beer. He sets his glass down and it must set something right inside of him, he must feel like he’s given himself enough courage, because he looks Paul square in the face and says: “Oh, sod it.” He straightens his posture and tells him: “I think I might be proper gay.” Paul raises his eyebrows at him, so John nods, as if to convince them both. He exhales deeply; everything about him looks lighter. Paul’s glad for it. “I meant to tell you sooner, I just… I dunno, whenever it got too close I’d shove it away.”

“It’s alright,” Paul assures him. He thinks of John that night at his house, sinking deep into the green velvet of his favourite chair. He thinks of that confession: that Cynthia is the only woman John’s ever loved. He remembers coming to John’s conclusion and seeing John start running scared about it. He’s glad he isn’t so scared of it now. “You’re telling me now,” he says, but it comes out closer to a ‘thank you for trusting me’.

“I’ve told Mimi,” John says and it freezes everything around them. Paul’s mouth hangs open on his last word. He goes pale and he knows his eyes are asking:  _ about me? _ So, John lets him off the hook, and says: “Not any specifics. Just… I had to tell her, you know?” Paul nods, still gaping. “And maybe I shouldn’t have used that word.”  _ Gay _ , it hangs between them, even now. “She might have had an easier time if she thought there was still a chance I’d end up with a woman.” He swirls his pint around in its glass. He must realize that Paul still hasn’t been able to respond, so he gets in his head. He rambles: “And maybe I will, who’s to say,” he says, and Paul feels something heavy fall between them. He realizes his own silence is making John backtrack. 

Paul shakes his head at him, opens his mouth to tell him that if it  _ feels right _ , it’s right, but John speaks over him before he has the chance. “I just can’t see it, you know?” Paul nods again. “And I don’t know if that’s because I can’t get  _ you _ out of my head, or if that’s the truth of it all, that I’m not what I’ve always thought I was. I just… When I  _ really think _ about what my life looks like when I’m  _ finally _ happy, it’s with…” He sets his jaw before he says too much. He changes course and corrects: “Well, it isn’t with a woman.” He sighs deeply, then says: “Not like...” as if on instinct, then catches himself before he says:  _ not like you _ . Because he sees Paul in front of him, looking deeply broken the night of his brother’s wedding, admitting that everything he’s ever wanted has just possibly gone up in flames. 

Paul takes a deep breath to match John and realizes that he should feel as though he should regret what he’d told John then, but he doesn’t. He’d meant it then, and maybe, like John, it’s just because he can’t get the life that they could share together out of his head, but he  _ isn’t sure _ it’s a woman he ends up with either. “Did you mean what you told me at Mike’s wedding?” John asks, seeming to have read his mind. “That it might not be a woman for you either?”

Paul takes a deep breath. He follows John’s lead and takes a mouthful of beer before speaking. “I don’t know,” he decides on. “I just want to marry the person I love.”

“But you aren’t like me, then,” John presses. “You haven’t stopped seeing that person as a woman?”

Paul sighs and decides that, with John, honesty will always be his best course. “No,” he tells him, and he sees John appreciate that. “That part of me hasn’t changed,” he says, meaning his love and care for women, seeing them as something desirable, his devotion to the idea of a family. John nods, but he looks stoic, like he’s meaning to hide how he really feels. “I’ve just… Opened my eyes to the other parts,” he adds, meaning  _ you, John Lennon _ , the life-changing force that has pushed and pulled him into the man he is now. 

John looks out over the bar, tucking some hair behind his ear, looking anywhere but inward as he confesses: “I don’t know why that feels like it means you’re not hopeless.” Paul feels his shoulders drop. He wonders what that must mean for John, then, but John puts words to it anyway. “I know it isn’t right to feel that way about meself,” he says, going self-assuredly strong in a way Paul wasn’t sure he’d ever see on him. “That I’m hopeless just because…” He sits up straighter, going stronger still. “Well, just because I’d like to live the rest of my life with a man.” He nods; Paul sees the self-acceptance for what it is. He feels what has to be pride blossoming inside of him and he wishes John would leave some for him. “Even if that man isn’t you,” he tells Paul, so they’ll both see and feel the truth of it, the certainty of it. Paul thinks he looks just as beautiful broken wide open as he does clammed up and viciously strong. “I’ve just…” His voice shakes on the next thought, so he takes a moment. He takes a deep breath and says: “I’ve had so much hate for this person inside me that it frightens me.” Paul exhales sharply. It hits him too deeply somewhere too close. “And I thought…” He shakes his head, keeps his eyes down on the table between them, and Paul wishes he wouldn’t. “I thought that if I started to tell people who I am and what I like, if I showed that person inside me off, and people loved me for it anyway, then it might make it easier to do that myself.” Paul nods, hoping for the same thing. “And it…” Something sinks like a stone in his stomach. He realizes he’d never actually asked how badly Mimi took it, what she’d said to him, but John seems to crumble in on himself, and Paul realizes, he doesn’t need to ask. He sees the answer all over the boy in front of him. “It didn’t go that way,” he admits, too tired to try to hide how hurt he is by it all. 

_ I love you for it _ , Paul wants to tell him. There’s an icy third presence around them suddenly; Mimi Smith, with her back to the boy she raised, and it builds this version of John that Paul had always been afraid of when they were kids: the one who would give into her, that wouldn’t argue with her, that would take the horrible things she’d say about him straight to his heart. And maybe he had, all these years. Every word she’d ever said to him had built itself into some hanging presence over him that only ever told him  _ no _ . Don’t do that, don’t  _ be _ that. 

Paul suddenly thinks of his own father, radiating love right back to him, no matter how much things had changed. He sees John in front of him, and Brian too, and suddenly realizes how  _ lucky _ he is to have the love of his family. Something so solid and certain, it was a privilege to men like him. It had served as a stepping stone for him, a system of support that he knows he’d fall without, but for others, family was just collateral damage. 

“Maybe she’ll come around, I don’t know,” John says, deciding he’s been vulnerable enough for the moment. He looks to even shake the sadness off of him. He takes another pull of ale; he’s nearly finished. He shrugs casually, though there’s something helpless about it. “This isn’t even the strangest thing about me,” he jokes. 

“It isn’t strange,” Paul tells him, deciding he isn’t finished, he isn’t ready to let this dissolve into something self-deprecating. John looks up at him and he looks like he’s searching for something, so Paul decides to tell him the truth, to just  _ say it _ : “I love you for what you’ve shown me.” It makes John flinch in his seat. He blinks, then his eyes are away from Paul’s. He swallows hard and has to look out across the bar, to put a bit of space between them. “I’m sorry that she doesn’t.” John shrugs again, keeping his eyes away. “But sometimes, maybe it’s the people we find along the way that end up meaning the things our family ought to.” Paul leans forward, keeping his eyes glued to John, urging him to turn back towards him. He just waits. He thinks:  _ look at me _ , and just waits. 

John shakes with the choice between looking this thing in the face or running away from it. He chews at the edge of his thumb nail and the table’s started to shake between them with the way his knee’s started bouncing up and down. 

Finally, John looks up at Paul from under his lashes, like he was something too bright to stare at directly. Paul leans further forward still and tries to tell him:  _ you’ve found me and I love you for it. _ Family be damned, they’d found one another. 

John must hear what he’s telling him, because he gobbles it up graciously, but it doesn’t make the fact any easier: “She was just the last one left, you know?” He hangs his chin down towards his chest, his long hair falls in front of his face and Paul wants to reach out and touch him, tuck it all back, so he can look deep into those eyes and let John get lost right back in his own. “I’ve always known I didn’t have any parents,” John tells him. “It just  _ feels _ that way now.”

There aren’t any eyes on them, but Paul wouldn’t care if there were, anyway. He reaches out and grabs onto John’s hand and just holds there. He holds on until some of his own warmth and love can work its way through him and into John. He holds on until John squeezes back and looks up at him like that love could be the thing that gets him through this night. John tugs Paul’s hand further across the table, closer to his chest, and Paul realizes, all along, he’d misunderstood what John had meant when he’d said he’d wanted it quiet. 

Clutching to Paul’s hand, Paul sees him for what he is: he’s a man who craves a love done loudly. He needs a love professed, a love chosen to act upon  _ every day _ . The Greek island had given them the luxury to make that choice every day. Paul’s had taken that away from him. He squeezes John’s hand again and he hopes that he feels how sorry he is, how much he hates that he’d taken that choice away from them both. 

They need to be filled with moments just like this one. Where they’re quiet enough to make this choice, to touch one another and love one another. John looks just shaken enough that he might just disappear completely if Paul ever decided to stop touching him. 

“I’m going to Los Angeles with Brian,” Paul suddenly tells him. He sees it for what it is: a moment of quiet, a moment between the two of them where he could turn back into the wave and John could just keep on being the moon that beckons him any way he’d like him to go. “Come with me,” he tells John and John’s nodding before he even finishes the question, because he sees it exactly for what it is, too. It’s a second chance at what Greece had been able to give them. More than anything, Los Angeles  _ isn’t _ London, it isn’t Dorset. It’s a place bathed in sunlight with an ocean so close by that it makes John feel like he can breathe again. 

“Okay,” John says and he sounds so hollowed out by the idea, so hopeless until the sun and the ocean can all breathe some life back into him again, that it makes Paul wish he could be the sun himself. Be the ocean. Be the  _ wave.  _

“Come home with me,” Paul suddenly says, before he can lose the nerve. John’s eyes go slightly wide because they both know what that suggestion really means. Paul thinks John could close his eyes and just picture them the way they were in Greece, the way they will be again in Los Angeles, and he could get lost there. For the first time, Paul wonders if John had wished they’d stayed with one another at Paul’s father’s place in Cheshire. 

“Okay,” he repeats, except this time, he sounds whole, living fully as the man who just said ‘yes’ to this. 

Paul leaves a few quid on the table and they’re outside before either of them can think too much about it. Before either of them can think too far ahead and realize that, as it all stands, nothing can come of this night. All it would be is  _ this night,  _ but for now, for the both of them, that’s enough. 

Paul accepts the lit ciggie that John offers him because it gives him something to do with his hands. All he wants to do is hold John’s in his, but he  _ knows _ it’d kill them both to have to let go every time a new set of headlights turned down towards them. So, he waits. Though, he isn’t so strong as to not let his arm swing by his side, casually brushing up against John’s as it goes. It’s the closest they can come to touching one another for now. John buzzes with just how much he wants to touch Paul back; Paul can feel it radiating off of him. 

John kisses him as soon as they’re through Paul’s front gate. The key’s still in the lock, his wrist is still turning it closed, but John puts his hands on his waist and kisses him so well that he nearly forgets the key there in the lock. He lets John tug him towards the front door, almost on autopilot. 

Inside, John shoves his jacket off his shoulders and once they’re away from any possible prying eyes, once they’re finally alone together, Paul hears what John is telling him:  _ you love me, you love me, you’ve found me and you love me. _

They hardly make it upstairs. John nearly comes undone before Paul can take him to bed. Paul looks down at him, cast in gold light from the streetlamps outside and realizes he’s gotten all wrong. If Paul was the wave, John wasn’t the moon at all. If Paul was the wave, John was just the thing beneath him that needs settling. 

\--

Paul wakes up alone and he tries to picture the version of John that would just leave. He isn’t sure that’s the version he’d brought home with him, but he still holds his breath as he takes the stairs downward, hoping that John is just putting on some tea, watching the news down low in the sitting room. It’s quiet, until he finally hears a hushed voice in the kitchen. 

He steps in the doorway and John sits up straighter at the dining table, unfurling himself from the telephone at his ear. He smiles up at Paul, then says down the line: “Paul’s up, I should let you go.”

Paul smiles back at him, then turns his back to start making a pot of tea. He hears John continue to say a few goodbyes, then he sets the telephone back in the body and joins Paul at the counter. He rests back up against it, crossing his arms over his chest. Paul glances at him and thinks:  _ don’t dare me to bring up what we’ve done. _ Because he will; he  _ wants _ to. John chuckles softly when neither acknowledges why they’re here together this early in the morning. He turns to the cupboard and gathers the sugar and two teacups. 

“Who was that on the phone?” Paul decides to ask. 

“Cyn,” John says with a shrug, setting everything down on the counter in front of them. 

Paul raises his eyebrows, but keeps his eyes down on the filling kettle in the sink. “Does she know why you’re here so early?”

John goes stiff beside him. He tinkers with the jar of sugar, lifting the lid to see how much was inside, then replacing it. He shrugs again. “Would you prefer I not tell anyone?”

Paul ignores the fact that they seem to have switched roles. He’d like to get defensive right back, but decides against it. He doesn’t want to fight. Quite the opposite, actually. He shrugs too, look casual and plaintive. John studies him carefully, but the gesture seems to make him relax slightly. “I don’t mind,” he tells him honestly. “How did she take it?”

John blushes slightly. He reaches across the counter for two tea bags and sets it in the pot that Paul’s grabbed for them. “She’s known for a while now,” he confesses. Paul looks at him sideways, wondering just  _ how much _ she knows and how quickly she’d learned it. John must know that’s the answer he’s looking for, so he clarifies: “Since Greece.” Paul exhales deeply. “I think she always sort of knew anyway.” Paul turns to look at him properly and he must look nervous, because John amends: “Not about you. Just about…” He looks away from Paul, smiles bashfully to himself and decides on: “My  _ proclivities _ .” He huffs out a small laugh, so Paul does too. He wonders when they might be able to easily call themselves what they are. It hurts that they can’t yet, but it hurts less because he can feel those versions of themselves somewhere close by, watching them. 

John kisses him on the cheek, then returns to the dining table. He picks up yesterday’s paper and reads through it while Paul finishes with the tea and then pulls out some bread for jam butties. 

“You know,” Paul says to the comfortable silence around them. He hears John fold the newspaper closed behind him, giving him too much of his attention. Paul feels himself clam up slightly, but he thinks: he doesn’t want to fight, he just wants to  _ tell _ John that he’s found him and that he loves him. “I think I’d like to talk about last night,” he says and all the oxygen leaves the room. 

You don’t  _ talk _ about the night before, it isn’t what you do. It lives somewhere between you and you just hope that the other feels the same way about it as you do. But Paul decides that that isn’t the way he wants to be. He realizes he wants to lay down each of his cards and let John go skittish for a moment if it meant that he might eventually look at them. 

“Not  _ just _ last night,” he clarifies, because it isn’t just about the sex, or kissing one another, it’s about everything. “About Mike’s wedding, too,” he adds, thinking, it’s about them holding hands with one another, it’s about them dancing together like they’ve been in love with each other their whole lives. He turns at the counter to face John, who’s fidgeting with his hands on the table, but his eyes are still on Paul anyway. He’s nervous, but he’s  _ listening _ . They’ve both been thinking it all last night and into this morning:  _ I’ve found you and I love you, so… _ “I want to be with you.” John’s jaw drops slightly, before he catches it. “I want to be with you,” he repeats, even though he knows it still means running around, still means too many people looking. “ _ Properly _ .”

“Properly?” John manages. “As in?”

“I don’t know,” Paul answers, exasperated. “I’ve never done this before, have I?” He sighs pointedly and tries to get down to the brass tacks. So, he tells him: “I want to do whatever’s closest to…” He thinks of what he’s done with Jane, or Dot before her. “Taking you out to dinner. Or, getting you flowers or a proper gift for your birthday. I don’t know.”

John stays stock-still. Paul can see the gears in his head running in overdrive. He blushes slightly, not knowing what to make of  _ any of this _ , so deflects: “That doesn’t sound like anything I’d like as a girlfriend.”

Paul rolls his eyes. At the deliberate misunderstanding, at the self-deprecating feminization. “You know what I mean,” he mutters, turning back to the tea petulantly. It isn’t getting him anywhere. It embarrasses him that he’s brought it up and John is looking back at him, not taking any of it to heart. 

Then, he hears the wooden legs of the chair John’s in scrape against the linoleum tiles. Paul turns to see him standing up, stepping slightly towards him. “Are you serious?” he asks and his voice has gone small, like he can’t quite believe there’s  _ anyone _ that would be serious about something like this with him. 

John starts to look too deeply inward, so Paul tells him: “ _ Yes _ ,” with as much devotion as he knows John needs. Behind his glasses, John’s eyes scan him up and down, looking for the part where that doesn’t feel true, where he’s finally met with what he is sure is there: nobody wants him forever. He swallows hard when he still can’t find it and Paul sees his chest start to heave up and down. It isn’t making him happy, Paul realizes. It’s making him nervous. It’s making him question everything he’s ever thought about himself, about the people who could love him. 

“You aren’t,” John tells him, though they both know it isn’t true. Paul realizes that he hasn’t meant to say ‘aren’t’, he’d meant to say:  _ you shouldn’t be _ . He stares back at Paul and Paul hears him:  _ look at me, you shouldn’t _ . Paul takes a deep breath, doesn’t back down and thinks:  _ you don’t see you like I do _ . 

“I am,” he promises, then he gives John what he needs: “And you don’t have to give me an answer right now.” Paul realizes he needs to give him time to start to see himself the way Paul sees him. He needs to needle in on that thing that is wrong with him, that he hates. He needs to rid himself of it, so he can love Paul without this clawing feeling that he doesn’t deserve it. “You don’t have to know anything,” Paul says. “I just know I needed to  _ say it _ . And I wanted to say it first so you’d know it was true.” John stares back at him like he’s something he doesn’t recognize. He hopes John can learn to love this version of him, too. So, he brings light to the bit he’s trying to fix. He’s still his Paul, standing in front of him, he’s just losing the part he doesn’t like. “So many of my problems have come from  _ not saying it _ , whatever the thing is inside me that’s tearing me up. And I just sit with it. And I don’t want to do that anymore.” He thinks of the version of himself in Greece, too terrified to tell John he loves him back, even though he’d  _ heard him _ . “I don’t want to do that to you anymore.”

John must trust the seriousness of the proposal, because he starts to poke holes elsewhere. He says: “We’d never be able to live together.”

“No,” Paul agrees, though he isn’t sure that’s true. 

“You’d not get kids until you left me,” John adds and it makes something in his chest ache. 

To John, they’re still just the versions of themselves that don’t love one another the same amount; Paul was still the one who would leave him and break him in half. 

He thinks, that’s a different fight for a different day. Today, he just says: “No,” and thinks:  _ I’m okay with that _ , until he thinks that John hears him. John hears him too closely. All he does is internalize himself as the thing keeping Paul away from what would make him happy. He shakes his head slightly, so Paul says what he needs to hear: “I love you,” he tells him, and John exhales sharply. “And I know it isn’t just as simple as that.” John shakes his head in agreement and Paul realizes he looks like he might tremble out of his own skin, so he decides that that’s enough. For now, that’s enough. He steps towards him and runs his hand down from his shoulder to his elbow and squeezes there. “Do you need to think about it?” he asks, though it’s more of a statement then it is a question. 

“I don’t want to mess anything up,” John admits, finally letting himself melt against Paul’s hand. 

“You won’t,” Paul assures him. 

“I  _ will _ ,” John counters. 

Paul sighs heavily, and he hopes this is the thing that John dislikes most: the fact that he puts himself, his own self-preservation ahead of something that could be good for him. “Please,” Paul asks of him. “Please just say you’ll think about it.” John glances up at him and they both hear what he’s left out:  _ and I’ll wait for you as long as it takes _ . Which is true, which, in this moment, feels unconditionally true. 

\--

He’s two drinks deep, up at the bar, when he actually realizes how comfortable he is here. He glances over his shoulder, back at the table he’s sharing with Robert Fraser and the American painter he’s brought along, Jackson Moore. Paul thinks Robert probably wants to shag him, but he hasn’t got a chance. Paul smiles, watching them lean in to speak to one another, without a care for who might be watching. Nobody cares who’s watching. 

He’s been to queer places before, of course, Brian had taken the lot of them out to a few in their early days, without their noticing, or at least without Paul’s noticing. He supposes John probably caught on. Maybe he’d been the one to ask Brian to take them to these sorts of places, under the guise that they were completely under Brian’s city-slicker guidance. That thought makes him smile harder. He wishes John was here with him, though he supposes the music is all wrong for John, nobody here is particularly John’s type, but he has to allow he doesn’t exactly know what John’s  _ type _ is. He could see Stuart in a place like this, so perhaps that version of John who had stayed with that version of Stu, who had lived late into his twenties, might have gone to a place like this. 

He carries their drinks back for them. Jackson takes two for him so he can sit down more easily. “Sometimes, just being there is enough,” Jackson is saying to Robert. “Thank you,” he adds, glancing to Paul, already taking the first sip of his gin, “but sometimes, it isn’t. It takes more than putting flowers in guns, man, sometimes it takes an actual fight.”

“So, the sit-ins are… what?” Robert presses. “Useless?”

“No, no,” Jackson sighs. “There’s a time for them, but we’re watching our brothers and sisters being beaten and killed in the streets, and we’re  _ sitting there _ ? We’re asking them to see peace? To have a change of heart on their own? No way. Trust me, it don’t work that way. The sooner you English  _ wankers _ ,” he says, putting on a terrible English accent on that word, which makes Paul laugh. Robert doesn’t. So Jackson changes course. “You’re too polite, Bob,” Jackson tells him. “What do Europeans say? You’ve gotta crack a few eggs?”

“Don’t quote a Frenchman,” Robert scolds, though he’s finally started to smile too. 

“You love the French,” Jackson teases. 

“It’s true,” Robert allows, remembering no particular French man he’s snogged quite fondly. “I do.”

Jackson smiles, shaking his head, then tells him: “It’s happening, man, is all I’m saying.” Robert nods thoughtfully. “People have had enough of being quiet, of asking instead of taking. Something’s gonna happen, man, I don’t know what, but somebody’s gonna break something and it’s gonna break this whole thing wide open.”

“I hope so,” Paul says, lighting a cigarette for himself. 

Jackson glances at him, glad to have at least one of them on his side. He holds his hand out for Paul’s cigarette and Paul obliges him. He watches Jackson take a long drag and wonders what he’s ever loved about America all these years. Watching this man in front of him, all it is is some giant piece of land that failed every man and woman who dared to be born differently. He thinks of his trip to Los Angeles and wonders just how much an escape that country can be, how different from England was it, really? It still clawed and would suffocate him. 

“So, am I meant to believe that the queers are going to march on London?” Robert asks, which prompts Jackson to pass Paul’s cigarette back to him. 

Jackson shrugs; it’s a palatable ‘yes’, then he adds: “They’re planning on it in San Francisco.”

“There aren’t  _ enough _ of us,” Robert persists. 

“Have you  _ been  _ to San Francisco?” Robert scoffs, but he shakes his head. “There are enough of us,” Jackson assures with an amused smile. Then, he looks back to Paul, and sets his hand down on his shoulder. “And more are coming out of the woodwork.”

“Ah yes,” Robert teases, smiling at Paul fondly. “The born-again queers, bless them.”

Paul rolls his eyes, but can’t help but smile. “Piss off,” he tells them both and hides his smile behind his whiskey coke. 

“Bob,” Jackson presses, leaning across the table towards him. “Are you really telling me you won’t march when it’s London’s turn?” Robert sighs, but he looks to be considering it. “You know that turn is coming.” Robert nods, allowing that to be true. He looks down into his glass and wonders what his part in all of it will be. Paul wonders the same thing too, though the thought of it makes him sick. “I met with a few guys in the CHE on Wednesday,” he says. Both Robert and Paul look up at him, though they’re looking for different answers. 

“What are they planning?” Robert asks, while Paul simply asks: “The CHE?”

Jackson throws a glance at Paul, then decides to answer Robert’s question instead. It makes Paul blush; he ought to have just known who or what the CHE is, he realizes. He sits back in his seat and listens to Jackson as he says: “They’re watching San Francisco. Whatever happens there, they’re going to do the same in solidarity. A march against all of it: Vietnam, the persecution and discrimination of gay men and women, police brutality. There are cracks in all of it. We can feel it.” Robert nods in agreement, Paul finds himself doing the same. “We’ve all got to play our part.”

“You know I’ll do what I can,” Robert promises, though Jackson just shrugs at him. He doesn’t know him well enough to be sure, though there’s something challenging about the gesture, something that asks him to  _ prove it _ . “Same for you, right, Paul?” Robert suddenly asks, looking for back-up. Paul feels himself clam right up. “I mean,  _ that _ would mean something, right? A  _ Beatle _ there?”

Paul glances up at Jackson, who’s watching him uneasily. He’s, at least, as uncomfortable with the idea as Paul feels. Paul exhales sharply and lamely offers: “I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“That doesn’t feel right to you,” Jackson observes, and Paul’s just glad he’s taken some of the attention off of him. 

“It feels…” Paul tries. “I mean, I want to  _ fight _ . I’m  _ angry _ about all these things too, I just…” He sees Robert watching him, trying to wade through his suspicions and find understanding. “The circus of it would be…” he says and he  _ sees _ Robert sigh heavily, finally conceding the truth of that, the truth of the difference in their realities, which, here in this bar, seemed to have disappeared, just for an evening. “I mean, any one of us step out to the shops and it’s world news, you know…”

“Headlines become: ‘Paul McCartney --  _ Beatle _ \-- seen at March for Gay Rights,” Jackson finishes for him. 

“Yeah,” Paul agrees. “Maybe I’m just being a coward about it,” he allows, glancing back at Robert. 

“I don’t think that’s all wrong,” Jackson tries. “It becomes less about what we’re marching for and more about you.”

“It feels prissy doing nothing,” Paul says, and cringes at his choice of words. Both Robert and Jackson tense at it too. He realizes his own self-hatred and self-deprecation have real-world consequences to the people around him. “I just don’t think it’s my place.”

“I think that’s a bit shite --” Robert starts. 

“It’s not doing nothin’,'' Jackson assures him. He takes another sip of his gin and shrugs. “I think your fight is just different than ours. Because of who you are. Your fight is on the television. On  _ record _ .” Something sets itself behind Paul’s chest. He thinks of John, always singing what he means, always singing his truth, and Paul realizes he’d like to the do the same --  _ consciously _ . “Your fight is to say ‘yes’ every time some reporter asks if you’re  _ still _ queer, if it’s  _ still _ true.” Paul nods, thinking of the paps outside EMI, how soft he’d gone on them, how he’d gone soft and polite and suddenly wishes he hadn’t. “Your fight is to stay visible for everybody needs to see you: a proud…  _ Millionaire _ … Gay Pop Star. You’re the art behind the faces of this movement.” Paul just nods again, he can’t think of anything else to say. “That’s not nothing,” Jackson assures him. Even Robert reaches out and touches his arm and smiles at him, convinced, and tries to reassure him any way he can. “Use your art, use your weight, use your money.”

“I want to help,” Paul confirms. 

“You are,” Robert tells him. 

“Hell yeah, you are,” Jackson agrees. “What you’ve already done: being  _ you _ and  _ saying it _ , it’s putting people on the streets.”

“Right,” Paul manages. 

“It won’t be like this forever,” Jackson says, leaning towards him. “You know the news cycle better than any of us,” he tells him, and Paul just nods again, because  _ at least _ , he’s most knowledgeable at this table about  _ that _ . “Eventually, they’ll let you live quietly,” he says and Paul sees John behind his eyes. For the first time, he sees the ending of all of this. He sees the moment where people grow bored of him, where they find somebody else to pester. And he sees that as the moment to have John back with him the way that they’re meant to be. “But right now,” Jackson says, pulling him back into reality. “Right now, every camera is on you.”

“Whatever we need,” Paul promises them both. I’ll do it.” 

It’s too late to ring Mal when he gets in, but he does it anyway. He’s had too much to drink to think too much about it. He asks Mal to find him a number for the CHE. There’s a cheque in his cheque book for £5,000 ready for them as soon as he finds out a little more about them. He trusts Robert’s judgment, Jackson too, even though he’s just met him, but he thinks he wants to trust his own as well. 

He writes a letter because he’s sure he’ll send the cheque as soon as Mal’s done what he does best. The letter demands anonymity and includes a return address, which he hopes he won’t regret, but he’d like the leave the communication open, should they ever need anything else from him. 

He thrums with the thought of doing some good, of making a difference, so he picks up his guitar to rid himself of some of this energy before bed. He tinkers away at it and a melody comes to him, one he  _ loves _ . He closes his eyes and sees John in front of him and something lovely comes out of him. 

When he’s finished, he scans over the scrap piece of paper in front of him, lets the lyrics warm him with their absolute truth. It feels like the most open thing he’s ever written. Then, in the fourth verse, he realizes he’s written down ‘ _ he _ ’.  _ He loves me _ . His first instinct is to erase the word off the page, to tear the page up entirely and bury it in the rubbish, but there’s another voice inside of him now, one other than the one that just aimlessly hates himself. This new voice tells him:  _ use your art _ . 

He wonders what it would mean to someone, flat on their back in their bedroom, listening to the song for the first time and hearing that:  _ he loves me _ and realizing that it’s something so real and so okay that somebody else had to put it down on record. He wonders what it would mean to  _ John _ to hear it. So, he doesn’t erase the word, he doesn’t change it to ‘she’, he doesn’t throw the whole thing away. He keeps it, forces himself to feel proud of it, until that pride feels like something natural. 

He puts it on a tape. This time, he plays it on the piano. 

\--

He knows he shouldn’t feel so bloody nervous around people who love him, but he sits there, chewing at the side of his thumbnail, crossing his legs, uncrossing them, then doing the exact same thing over and over as he listens to his own voice over the speakers in the recording booth. He glances at George Martin, who’s nodding along with the music; he likes it, but something lands like a stone in the pit of Paul’s stomach: George has no idea what’s coming. None of them do. John even starts to hum along with the chorus the second time around. 

But it’s there, that word, that  _ pronoun _ , it’s making Paul’s skin crawl while he just waits for the fourth verse. The last one, where he’d thought he might be able to sneak it in. He hears his own voice finally sing:  _ he loves like he means it _ , and nobody says anything, but he feels the room shift around him. George Martin stops nodding, then overcompensates for his sudden change of tone. He starts to nod again and hums thoughtfully. 

Paul looks up at George and sees him finish throwing a glance in John’s direction. He feels his hands start to shake and realizes he  _ can’t _ look at John right now; he can’t look and see if he’d even been looking at George, if he’s even been able to look away from the thin carpet at his feet. 

The tape clicks finished and nobody moves. Nobody says anything and he feels like he could just  _ cry _ about it. He opens his mouth to say that he’s still working on the words, meaning that he can still let them off the hook, but then George Martin says: “That’s lovely,” and Paul just exhales sharply instead. 

“Really?” he asks. 

“That piano bit back into the verses is gorgeous,” Geo agrees, and Paul doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that they’re not acknowledging the elephant in the room. He finally looks to John, who’s looking right back at him. Paul realizes that he’s written so many songs to John over the years, but this is the first one that John actually trusts is for him, alone. He and John look at one another long enough that Paul hears the words ‘ _ thank you _ ’ in his head, and he realizes that he should be saying that, too. 

“Thank you,” he mutters shyly to George, to both George’s, actually. 

“I like that one, yeah,” John finally says, because he must realize that George Martin is looking to him for some sort of agreement. It isn’t exactly what he means, he more than  _ likes it _ , but Paul lets him get away with it. He can still feel the love and gratitude about it anyway. 

“You know,” George tells him while they make their way down to the studio. He keeps his voice low, so John and Rings ahead of them don’t hear. “They’ll probably ask you to change the words,” he says, and Paul wonders who he means by ‘they’: Brian and George Martin? The record executives? Advertisers? He isn’t sure, all he knows is that George is probably right. “They shouldn’t, but they will,” he adds, brushing his arm up against Paul’s. It’s a gesture that says:  _ I’m here anyway, _ and Paul hears that. 

“Probably,” Paul agrees, going for casual, but he thinks he might sound sad about it. “But worth a shot, innit?” he adds playfully, nudging George softly with his elbow. 

“It is,” George replies earnestly and Paul feels his easy smile start to turn into something else. He thinks he must look a little too much like John had back in Lesbos: unbelievably gracious to be receiving something he hadn’t thought he deserved; so, he nods instead, looks away, watches George’s hand as he turns the doorknob in front of them and steps into the main studio room. 

“Yeah,” he mutters, because it’s easier than saying:  _ thank you for loving me _ . 

It’s an easy session; they work well and they work quickly. 

“Can I get a smoke, George?” John asks after one of the takes. Upstairs, George Martin waves him off, so John slips out of his guitar strap. George noodles something out on the guitar, which turns into Clarence Carter’s  _ Slip Away _ . He coughs pointedly, so Paul looks up and catches him trying to grab Ringo’s attention. He coughs again and this time, Rich looks up at him, then immediately sits up a little straighter and lays his drumsticks down across his floor tom.

“Actually,” Rich says, going for subtle, but coming up against anything but. “I’m meant to ring Mo, say good night to the kids.” He stands himself up, stretches out the knots in his back. Up the control booth, George Martin has leaned away from the console, he’s chatting away with one of the engineers. 

The door shuts behind Rich, then George sets his guitar down against the chair he’s sitting on. “You fancy some tea. Paul?” he asks, and it’s what they used to always say when they meant to sneak off to the loo to smoke a joint together. Paul smiles suspiciously and realizes that John is probably already there waiting, and Rich won’t be far behind. 

“Sure,” Paul mutters around a wide grin. 

As they’re filing out, George Martin asks: “Boys?” over the P.A. system and Paul can’t help but giggle. 

“Tea break!” George calls up to him and doesn’t wait for an answer. 

He’s proven right, as soon as they step inside the toilets. John is already there, leaning back against the white porcelain sink, lazily smoking a cigarette. Rich is just to his left, though he’s hopped right up on the marble, one leg crossed over the other. 

Once they’re all safely inside, all accounted for, George pulls the latch shut and the rest of the world falls away beyond them. 

Except, Paul isn’t right about everything: instead of pulling a joint from his pocket, John uncrosses his arms, steps towards Paul and says: “This is about your new song.”

For a moment, Paul thinks he ought to feel ambushed. He glances from John to Rich, who just nods, so he looks back at John. He wonders how oblivious he must have been in the studio, too driven by work and perfection to notice his three best mates talking about him behind his back, planning this little rendez-vous in the men’s toilets. 

“What?” Paul manages. 

John looks to Rich and then George. They must be in agreement about whatever he’s about to say. He takes a deep breath, so Paul holds his own, then John says: “We stand by it.”

“That’s right,” Rich mutters. 

“We all know Eppy is going to have a fit about it,” John continues. “So, when he comes into the studio tomorrow to tell us to change it, we dig our heels in the ground.” John raises his eyebrows, searches for nothing but support and resolution in both George and Ringo. He must see it, because he presses on: “We tell him we’re recording it the way it’s been written. Anyone opposed to that idea?” Both Ringo and George give assured shakes of their head. So, John looks to Paul, looking as fiercely resolute as he’s made his mates feel. He’s speaking to the two of them, but he’s looking directly at Paul. He nods reassuring, and Paul actually  _ feels _ some of their strength form as something solid and tangible inside of him. He holds onto it for dear life. He realizes just how much he’ll need it. 

“So, when the album comes out and some square reporter wants to make you answer for it,” he says, looking from George to Rings and then back. “You  _ defend _ it.” He pauses, makes them nod, makes them let him know that they’re  _ listening _ . “We know everyone in this room  _ doesn’t care. _ He, she, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, so we defend it on those grounds. We don’t get nervous. We don’t pull a ‘no comment’, we  _ say what we mean _ .” He looks back to Paul. Paul realizes he means:  _ I love you no matter what. _ “Anybody opposed to  _ that _ ?” he asks to no one in particular. 

“No.”

“No way.”

“Good,” John says. He takes a few more steps towards Paul, looking all the more the leader for it. “Now  _ we _ ,” he says, meaning the three of them, “don’t get to change our minds about this. We’ve said it, it’s done. But  _ you _ ,” he says, stepping closer to Paul still, reaching out and grabbing at his elbow. He lowers his voice, almost as if it’s just the two of them left. “If you ever want to toss the song out, or change the words, you  _ do it _ . Let us put our necks out.”

Paul gazes right back at John; he thinks:  _ you’re like me _ , this frightens John as much as it does Paul, but he’ll take the lashes for it. The support and solidarity is almost too much to bear, both from men who would never know what any of this feels like, and from John, who isn’t afraid to love him in all the right ways. 

“Okay,” Paul says, though he isn’t sure how he manages it. 

Ringo hops off the counter, stands right in front of him. He places a gentle hand on his shoulder and tells him: “It’s like the old days. Us against the world.” Paul huffs out a laugh, though he thinks it might be him starting to cry too, so Rich wraps his arms around him, pulls him close. George is somewhere near, too. Then, there’s a kiss in his hair and a hand at the back of his head. It’s as close to a blessing as he thinks he’ll ever have. 

“Go on,” he hears John tell them, and he can’t bear to look up, so he listens to George and Ringo’s boots scuff across the tiled floor, until he’s just surrounded by John: his love, his devotion, his protectiveness.

“Thank you,” Paul says, because he knows he has to, because he knows he  _ wants  _ to. 

He cheats a glance up at John, who just nods at him reassuringly. “It’d tear you up to hold it inside you,” he says, but all it really means is that John’s been listening to him. He’s been taking in what he’s been saying and he’s trying to live in a way that will help Paul be better. It’s more than an ‘I hear you’, it’s an ‘I  _ understand  _ you’, because he’s doing exactly what Paul needs him to do. “I made this whole thing about me before,” he suddenly confesses, and he means everything, their coming together, their falling apart, Paul’s  _ coming-out _ . “I made it about how it was making  _ me _ feel, and that’s not fair,” he says. Paul shakes his head at him, but John doesn’t let him argue. “It isn’t even  _ true _ . It’s about you. Not me.” Paul watches something inside John change; he’s realized something. He swallows hard, and Paul can’t believe it; he can’t believe he’s about to put words to this thing running wild inside of him. “That’s the bit I don’t like, you know,” he says. “Always putting me first, that’s what I’d like to change.” Paul nods, remembering he’d thought just the same thing back in his kitchen at Cavendish. He’d thought: put the universe first, put my love for you first, anything but the thing that will keep you from seeing how beautiful you are. “You shouldn’t be with me,” John says and Paul feels something land hard in the pit of his stomach. He shakes his head,  _ no _ , that isn’t what any of this means. “You shouldn’t be with me until I know I can put you first.”

And the amendment breathes a little life back into him. Because it isn’t a ‘no’ to the question still hanging over them both. It’s a ‘not right now’. More than that, it’s:  _ not until I can be better for you _ . 


	9. chapter nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, again, posting a new chapter before responding to the previous chapter's comments! 
> 
> I've been a bit busy and may not get the chance to respond to them any time soon, but please know that I so appreciate all of them and that I really wouldn't be able to keep up the motivation without your kindness and encouragement! 
> 
> FYI - this chapter is a bit shorter than these have been. I feel like the next will also be in the same boat, but together they would have been too long. 11 will be juicy, I swear, and will end us off, actually! I'm keeping 12 chapters here for a little epilogue that probably will only be 2k words. So! Suffice it to say, we're getting very near the end and I just wanted to make sure you all knew I appreciated you guys through this lil journey!

Brian’s quiet through the airport, the way he always is when he has something important to say. He hadn’t come to the studio, not like they’d all imagined. He’d stayed away and let them record, though Paul knows as soon as he sees him in their hired car that morning they’re heading to Los Angeles, that he knows about the song and he’s had one or two thoughts about it. 

At least it’s early in the morning. They can all blame their lack of conversation on not being fully awake yet. Somewhere along the way, Paul agrees to go to the meeting with the  _ Capitol _ execs. He figures, he’s here in Los Angeles, he might as well go, though something tells him he’ll regret it. Next to him, John listens to the conversation carefully. As it finishes, he hugs his jacket closer to his chest and says: “I’ll go too.”

Brian sighs, but he doesn’t protest. Paul suddenly realizes he never asked if John could join them this weekend; one evening, he’d just rung Brian up and said: “John’s coming with us,” and he wonders if that had been the wrong thing to do. If it was, Brian doesn’t tell him as much. 

John falls asleep once the plane levels out; he’d lasted longer than Paul thought he would after Brian had handed him two sleeping pills as soon as they’d sat down. The quiet feels heavier once it’s just between the two of them. John’s still here, but he isn’t the buffer he can usually be. Paul watches him sleep, watches him curl in on himself against the plane window and he wants to climb into that seat next to him, press their bodies together until it’s just the two of them left. 

“I know about your new song,” Brian suddenly reveals, though his voice is soft and slow, like he doesn’t mean to startle him with it. Paul sighs; he supposes he couldn’t have been startled, no matter how Brian said it, he’s been expecting this conversation all morning. “George called me,” he adds. Paul nods, feeling betrayed and understanding all at once. It’s funny, they never seem to misunderstand which  _ George _ they’re ever speaking about. There’s a certain fatherly fondness when you’re speaking about Harrison, and something equally warm, but reverent when you mean Martin. 

“And what did he have to say about it?” Paul asks, meaning:  _ just tear the bandage off, do it.  _

“He thinks it’s a great song,” Brian says and Paul feels something warm burst inside of him. “He’d love to produce it, but  _ the lyrics,  _ Paul,” Brian says sadly, like Paul’s made him do something he doesn’t want to do. 

“I know,” Paul allows. 

“He leaves the decision up to me,” Brian continues and Paul can tell he doesn’t like it, he can tell he’s using George’s words right back at him. He shifts in his seat, closer to Paul; his hands fidget as though he’d like to reach out and touch him, but for now, he stops himself. “And I had every intention to tell you to change it,” he says, berating himself about it. “To tell you to record it all you’d like, but the tapes would never see the light of day. Because it  _ is _ dangerous,” he says, looking up, directly at Paul, something fierce and protective, but something proud too. “It opens you -- and the boys -- up to incredible scrutiny.” He doesn’t even have to look in John’s direction as he says it, Paul knows exactly who he  _ really _ means. “There will be burnings,” Brian assures him, and Paul knows he’s right. “There will be death threats.” Paul nods helplessly and thinks he’d sound petulant if he says:  _ yeah, but! _ except Brian says it for him: “But…” he says. “There would also be a tremendous amount of love.” And Paul feels that love inside of him; he knows Brian can feel it too and something about that feels worth it. “A tremendous amount of gratitude and pride in a way I never thought I would see in my lifetime.” Paul nods again, except this time it’s fervent. He doesn’t just see a younger version of John, lost, but hearing this song for the first time and feeling seen by someone who means something to him, he sees that younger version of Brian, too, of himself. “I realized that hearing a song like this. Well…” Brian swallows hard and admits to something deep and dark inside of him that they’ve all always known is there. “Well, it would have saved my life. And I wouldn’t have had to save it for myself.”

“Bri --” Paul starts, but Brian isn’t finished. 

“The world would still prefer for people like you and me to be gone,” he says and Paul wires his mouth shut. He knows it to be true, but knows he has to fight against that in any way that he can. “If the release of this song really is my decision at all,” he says, though he doesn’t believe it is. He believes it’s entirely Paul’s. “Then, I am  _ deciding _ to give you the space...” Paul holds his breath, feels something welling up inside of him and he realizes it’s actually pride. Not some faked, knock-off version of it, but  _ actual _ pride in himself and who he is, and who he has decided to surround himself with. Brian sits up a little straighter and Paul wonders how anyone could ever see him as meek as he says: “To tell them all to go fuck themselves.”

Something of a laugh escapes him, except it isn’t funny, it’s  _ joyful _ and his body doesn’t know how else to react. There’s this deep-rooted joy inside of him that’s based entirely on who he is, how he loves, and how he’d like to share that with the world. It’s something  _ strong _ and  _ resolute _ because he realizes he isn’t alone. It’s just Brian in front of him, but he feels lifted so high that he can’t ever imagine coming back down. 

A stewardess passes by them and Brian must also feel high on something, because he stops her and asks for a bottle of wine to split between the two of them. 

They’re nearly finished the bottle and it must be something about the altitude, about the early morning, that has the wine hitting them a little harder than it usually would. When they’re both on their last glass, John stirs beyond Brian and they both cover their mouths, stifling the giggles that have taken over. Slowly, John starts to come to, sits up, and groggily stares out at the empty bottle on the seat tray between them. 

“Fuck off,” he mumbles and Paul can’t stop smiling at the way his hair is sticking up on one side. “You’ve had wine without me?”

\--

It’s only about three in the afternoon when they make it to the home that Nat’s rented out for them. It’s out of the city-center, just as Brian had promised. It’s gated and surrounded by lush trees, so it feels decidedly theirs. There had only been a few reporters at the airport waiting for them, so it doesn’t seem to be a big story, their being here. Though, with a half a bottle of wine in his belly, he doesn’t particularly care -- big story, or no, he’d just like to have fun. 

They spend the afternoon out by the pool, quickly unstocking the meticulously clean kitchen left for them. John eats an entire bunch of grapes on one of the lounge chairs by the pool while Brian finds everything he needs to make them a bowl of margaritas, which should probably sound dangerous, but it’s too perfect to say no to. 

“I want to go out,” John laments once the sun goes down behind the gated wall around them. The sky’s gone purple and orange and Paul couldn’t agree more. He sits up, spilling some of his drink down his hand, and looks to Brian, who, still after all these years, has the power to veto an idea should it be too risky. 

“I can’t be late for that meeting tomorrow,” Brian says, but it just makes Paul break out into a wide grin, because it isn’t a  _ no _ . In fact, it’s a  _ yes _ , just with some ground rules laid out underneath it. Paul sets his glass down on the cement deck and rubs his hands together happily. John smiles too. 

“Where to then?” Paul asks, looking from John to Brian and back again. 

Still warmed by the afternoon sun, feeling lucid and happy with it, Paul realizes he’d like to go to a place where no one would look at them, where he and John could speak lowly to one another and nobody would notice, like Robert and Jackson had been able to. 

“Let’s go to a nice place,” Paul says cryptically. He raises his eyebrows to Brian, hoping he’ll catch his drift. “A  _ proper _ place,” he adds and sees Brian blush slightly, so he knows he’s come through clear. 

He unfolds his legs out from underneath him and lifts himself up off the lounge chair they’re all sharing. “I’ll call Nat for some recommendations,” he says and disappears in through the sliding glass door into the back of the rented house. 

Paul turns back to John, who’s grinning at him. “What?” Paul asks. 

“A  _ proper _ place?” John teases. 

Paul rolls his eyes at him, but can’t help but match John’s smile. He realizes that John likes the idea that the sort of place where they can touch one another, maybe even kiss, is the  _ proper _ place for them. He shifts lower on the chaise and lets his head fall into John’s lap. He blinks up at the dimming sunset, watches as the wispy clouds still make their way across the sky. He feels John’s hand run through the hair at the crown of his head, shy at first, then, like it’s exactly what he’s meant to be doing. 

Inside, Brian must be finished with his phone call, because they can both hear the needle drop on a Supremes record. It makes Paul smile, and above him, John actually laughs. “He’s excited,” he allows. 

Paul twists at the middle and looks up at John, who’s opened an eye to look down at him too. For a moment, they just smile at one another, and Paul thinks he could just as well stay here all night. He thinks that, for as long as he’s known it, loving John has felt like something painful, but here, in the setting sun, in the warmth of a summer evening, it feels like a gift more than it ever has an obstacle. He wants to tell him as much. He realizes that there will be a day where he can just say ‘I love you’ and not feel so soft about it. 

“We should get dressed,” John tells him, so Paul swallows down that ‘I love you’ and plans to save it for a moment that will make John smile. He nods, props himself up on an elbow, to let John climb out from underneath him. They both swing their legs off the side of the lounge chair; Paul stands before John and stretches his hands up above his head, unfurling the vertebrae in his back that has been left disused all afternoon. He feels John watching him, but he doesn’t feel embarrassed about it. Neither does John, particularly, to be caught doing it. 

Paul spends longer than he ought to in his bedroom, standing over his still unpacked case, wondering what he should wear. It isn’t that he doesn’t know what to expect in a place like this, he’s been to queer places, of course, but he just thinks he’d quite liked the way John’s eyes on him felt. He supposes he’d like to make him look all night. 

Brian swings into the room with a refilled glass of scotch and coke. Handing it off, he takes in what Paul’s wearing, sees that he isn’t fully decided, so he steps closer and tugs at Paul’s sleeve. “You look nice,” he observes. 

Paul turns towards him, feels himself blush like he might have if Brian had said that to him when he’d been nineteen. He shrugs, but tells him, “thank you.”

Brian reaches out and sets the collar of Paul’s shirt straight. Keeping his eyes focused on the job he’s doing, he smirks and asks: “Who is it you’re trying to impress anyway?”

Paul goes even more pink, if it were possible. He glances out the open door of his bedroom, where John is heading towards the record player. He swings his hips slightly to the music, as if nobody's watching, and it warms something inside of Paul’s chest. He has to look away, so Brian follows his gaze, sees what’s made him go so shy, and he smiles wider. Feeling satisfied with the collar, he lets his hands wander down Paul’s arm, where he gives his biceps a reassuring squeeze. 

“You could be in burlap and you’d still impress  _ him _ ,” Brian coaxes.

Paul laughs before he means to, so they both know Brian’s caught him in the truth. He sighs heavily, easing up the tension in his shoulders. He shakes his head at himself ruefully. “I hope I didn’t upset you when I invited him,” Paul finally decides to say. 

Brian immediately shakes his head at him, absolving him of any guilt. “I’m meant to be upset because John’s with us?” he says around a bashful laugh. “I quite like him too, you know,” he adds, and it doesn’t feel like a dig, it doesn’t feel like something that should barb either of them, it really just serves to bring them together. There are so many experiences that they’ve had together, that have forged them into one person, loving John is just another. 

They pile into the limo that Nat’s organized for them, which takes them to the Sunset Strip. It’s deep into the evening by the time they arrive; most of the patrons are too far along to notice them as they make their way towards a booth in the back that’s been reserved for them. If some do, they certainly don’t make a spectacle of it, same as it’d been in England. Once they have drinks, once they’re as alone as they can get in the dark corner of a basement nightclub, even Brian starts to relax. 

There’s a small stage in the far corner of the bar; it’s really only a 6x6 platform laid on the floor, but there’s a spotlight suddenly shone on it and it makes everybody inside feel excited all the same. Paul whoops, even though he hasn’t got a clue what they’re about to watch. John gives him an excited jab with his elbow as the entire bar dissolves into cheers; could be music, they don’t know. 

A man with a microphone steps onto the stage, introducing the act, but the other patrons have pushed closer to the stage, they’ve gotten louder, so Paul can hardly hear what the man is saying. Everybody but them seems to know exactly what to expect. He finishes with a flourish before a woman with wildly voluminous hair and a tight emerald sequined dress steps onto the stage. The place practically erupts. Across the table, Brian goes pink; he turns away from the stage and curls into his scotch and coke. Paul leans forward, towards him, means to ask him ‘what’s wrong’, before he feels John’s hand batting at his knee under the table. 

“That’s a bloke in that dress,” he says towards Paul’s ear; keeping his voice low, but still needing to practically shout over the other men around them and the loud music that’s begun to play. 

“You what?” Paul asks, peering across the bar for a better look. “No.”

“I’m  _ telling _ you,” John insists, grinning madly. “Innit, Eppy?”

Still blushing, Brian nods. “Yes, it is,” he allows. 

Next to him, John lights a cigarette; when Paul looks at him, he just shrugs, in that sort of  _ I’m-right-you’re-wrong _ sort of way. He leans back in the booth and just watches the show. Paul does too, though he can’t help but keep glancing back at John. He won’t take his eyes off the performer on stage and even though he’s tapping along with the beat of the music against the tabletop, it isn’t the music he’s most interested in. He looks taken with it, the concept as a whole. Paul reckons he can’t quite believe that there are men who feel so  _ suited _ in themselves as men and as homosexuals, that they’re completely comfortable messing about with all the things they’ve been taught make them men. 

Paul does suddenly understand how liberating it must be. How liberating it  _ has been _ , just to even be taking baby steps in this sort of direction. He hasn’t changed much, he thinks, since he’s come out, but he watches John, and he thinks:  _ I love you _ , and he realizes he’s  _ said _ it; John knows and if that’s all he’ll ever be willing to do because of all this, it’ll have been worth it. 

Halfway through the performance, they get up to dance. John speaks with the MC and wiggles his way back into the green rooms behind the stage while Paul goes to the bar to get them all more drinks. 

“He’s quite enthralled,” Brian observes, setting himself down against the bar next to Paul. 

Paul smiles to himself, then lifts his eyes to Brian and nods. “It’s nice,” he says. Brian nods back. They’ve both seen him at his worst, Paul realizes. His most closed-off and self-loathing. He hopes those parts don’t come back. 

Plenty of people in the art scene had observed that John had gone kinder; softer, maybe. And Paul supposes he had. He must do, once he considers the John Lennon he’d met back in Liverpool. But he can’t ever seem to pinpoint a moment where that had started. He realizes he could go so far back as 1963, freshly back from Germany, before then, even. He supposes the only real difference is John had started to hold that kindness less close to his chest. Less afraid of it. There’d always been two sides to John, both of which Paul loved, but they were at constant war with one another. The brute, macho side seemed to win, more often than not, especially when they’d been younger, and Paul can see that that must have hurt. Each time John had swallowed down the softer side, pretended it wasn’t there, it had hurt him tremendously. He still would, from time to time, but he’d learned to do it less and less over the years. 

There’s a life in front of him, suddenly. The one where John’s decided he’s ready, that they’re together and he doesn’t ever choose between his softer and harder side; he simply exists in both, and Paul continues to love him, no matter what he is. 

“Are you glad you’ve come?” Brian asks once the barman slides them their drinks. “To LA?”

“Of course I am,” Paul answers easily. Brian nods, content with himself, with what he’s offered. 

“I’m glad you’ve invited John along,” Brian says as they make their way back towards their booth. “I ought to have invited him myself. He needed it as much as you did.” Paul nods in agreement as they slide into opposite sides of the table. “He did tell you about his Aunt, didn’t he?” 

Paul takes a deep breath, remembers sitting opposite John, just like this, at The Clifton. He nods and admits: “He has, yeah.”

Brian nods, his empathy swatching off of him, filling the whole bar around them. “He seems quite alright about it now,” he says carefully. “Though I think he was rather heartbroken.”

“It wasn’t easy, telling her,” Paul says. “Well, you’ve met her, you know what she’s like.”

“I suppose I do,” Brian says, sipping at his drink. “Did you get the sense he’ll ever speak to her again?”

“Yeah,” Paul says. “He will,” he adds, though he thinks he sounds a bit bitter about it, though he hadn’t intended for it. “He’ll just keep those bits to himself whenever he sees her. She’s very good at ignoring what she doesn’t like to see.”

“Most mothers are,” Brian allows and it just makes Paul think of Julia. He realizes how much he’d needed to hear his father tell him that Mary would have loved him, been proud of him, despite his  _ tendencies _ . He wonders if John had ever thought that he’d need that, too. Except, there wasn’t anyone left to hear it from. It makes something ache inside of him. It runs so deep that it makes him decide to love John enough for Julia and Mimi and a father who isn’t Alfred all together. 

“Ah,” Brian suddenly says. “So, we haven’t lost him to the drag queens, then,” he adds, nodding across the bar as John slips out from the back hallway, a new drink in his hand, despite likely not asking nor paying for it, and makes his way back towards them. Paul watches him, a dumb, drunken smile plastered on his face. In  _ this _ moment, Mimi Smith doesn’t matter to him. None of it matters to him. He’s smiling, so Paul smiles back at him, baring his cheek for the kiss John looks ready to plant as he drops himself down in the booth next to Paul. 

“Were they as fascinating as you imagined?” Brian asks him, pushing John’s drink towards him, despite him not needing it. 

“Smart fuckers, the lot of ‘em,” John says simply, throwing back most of his glass in one go. He clasps his hands, rubs them together mischievously. “I quite like LA,” he concludes. “I reckon I could live here.”

“To your detriment,” Brian teases. “And ours, probably.” John rolls his eyes at him good-naturedly, though it all does seem too decadent for his own good. 

He leans back against the booth and stretches his arm along the back of it, allowing himself to edge a little closer to Paul. He glances up at him through his lashes, still grinning and Paul sees what Brian means: it would be to their detriment, too, because Paul thinks he’d do just about anything John asked him to in this moment. If he’d said:  _ give up The Beatles and live with me here, _ Paul knows he would. If John said:  _ kiss me here, in front of all these people _ , he knows he would. He goes red with it, the fact that he feels as though he’s being wined and dined. He hears John laugh at him; it’s really no more than an amused exhale of breath, though Paul knows what he’s doing. 

He doesn’t think it will ever stop being intoxicating, being with JOhn this way, having John look at him this way. 

“Shove off,” Paul suddenly says, pushing at John’s chest. “I’ve got to hit the loo,” he lies. He prays John won’t get up and follow him as he continues to push him out of the booth. John watches him, looking playfully disappointed, but he lets him go alone. He takes a few deep breaths as he goes. That life is ahead of him again, the one where John is everything he’s ever wanted to be, the one where he wants him unabashedly. He clings to it, he thinks it must be what they both deserve. He stares at himself in the mirror as he washes his hands in the sink and thinks:  _ I can wait for this. It will be worth it _ . 

Outside, some of the cheers and singing turn to shouts. It suddenly doesn’t sound so joyful. The music stops and Paul glances down at his watch. It’s nearly half-two, they shouldn’t be getting kicked out for another hour, yet. He’s frozen and he doesn’t even realize why. He watches himself in the mirror and distantly, his mind is telling him to go out and see what’s wrong. Any other place, he’d just think that someone had started a fight. But before the logic rushes him, the stupidity of what they’ve done and where they’ve gone, his instincts are telling him to be afraid. Because they’re in a place they shouldn’t be. They’re in a place and a country where this is still illegal. 

It doesn’t help that Brian darts his head into the washroom and says, very definitely: “We’re leaving.”

“What’s happened?” Paul asks dumbly. 

Brian doesn’t give him an answer; he just steps into the toilets, grabs Paul by the arm and tugs him along. 

“They were asking for  _ help _ ,” John’s saying as they spill out onto the sidewalk. About a half-block up, their rented car sees that they’ve exited and rolls towards them. “We should  _ help _ them, Brian.”

“What’s happened?” Paul asks again. 

“That would be out of the question,” Brian says to John, waving down their driver to come quicker. 

“We could have  _ done something _ , ye fuckin’ coward!” John continues, relentless in his criticism of whatever was still happening around them. Brian steps towards him, and for the first time in his life, Paul thinks Brian might hit him. John must know he won’t, or he simply isn’t afraid of it, because he doesn’t back down, so Paul puts his arm between them, making sure that they keep their distance. 

“Alright, alright,” he tries. “What the bloody hell is going on?”

“We’re in the middle of something important and Brian wants to run away,” John says vaguely, despite the very pointed anger in his voice. 

“Get in the car,” Brian tells John, opening the back door for him. They all know it assuredly means the driver can hear them now. They all know they can’t speak about the sort of place they’ve just come out of. It’s tactful and silencing and John sees it for exactly what it is: a chance to shut him up. He shakes his head incredulously; tears himself away from Paul. He looks as though he might just decide to walk home before he brushes by them both and climbs into the back of the car. 

Nobody speaks as they drive through Los Angeles, back to their quiet mansion, though Paul desperately wants to ask again:  _ what’s happened? _

John goes straight to his bedroom once they arrive. The one he plans to sleep in alone, though Paul had hoped they’d spend the evening together. Brian goes straight to the bar cart. Paul’s torn between them both. He glances uneasily at John’s closed bedroom door, then back to Brian, who tells him sullenly: “He’d like to be left alone, I’m sure.”

Paul sighs, has to give in that he’s probably right, so he joins Brian for a drink. When they’re elbow-to-elbow, Brian making himself a gin and tonic, and Paul, a straight glass of scotch, Paul finally gets to ask him, and expects an answer: “What did I miss back there?”

“There was a bar being raided very near to us,” Brian tells him. “A few men had been arrested.” Paul exhales, it comes out rather shaky. “They were planning to march on the police station to have them released. Gathering as many men from the nearby bars as they could.” Brian glances over his shoulder towards John’s room and explains: “John wanted to join them.” Paul nods. He knows John would hate him for it, but he’s gracious and understanding to Brian in front of him. “He doesn’t think of the consequences,” Brian says, as though he feels like he still has to explain further himself. “It would have been too dangerous.”

“You did the right thing, Bri,” Paul assures him. “They didn’t need us there. Making a spectacle of it all.”

Brian nods, happy to be agreed with. He relaxes his shoulders, smiles back at Paul and says: “I was afraid you’d be cross with me, too.”

Paul just shakes his head. “I think we’ve got to make our differences in a different way.” Brian nods in agreement. “Will you keep up on it?” Paul asks him. “I’ll pay the bail if they aren’t released.” The idea pales in comparison to John’s desire to  _ be there _ , demonstrating, but it still frightens Brian all the same. 

“It’s rather risky,” he allows. Paul shrugs in response. Brian studies him, hoping he’ll relent, but all Paul can think about is Jackson across from him at that bar in London. Doing nothing would never be an option, he simply had to be smart about what it was he did choose to do. Brian sighs, knowing he won’t get anywhere and says: “I’ll put Nat on it.”

\--

John had been first to bed, but he’s also last to wake. 

Paul and Brian have already shared breakfast. They’ve already been on the phone to Nat Weiss. They’ve already learned that the bar had been called The Patch and that all the detained men had been released because the bar’s owner had emptied the registers to pay their bail. Paul’s already written a cheque to help the man break even, he’s already hired a courier to take it from their rented house over to the Sunset Strip. 

John joins them at the kitchen table, picks up the newspaper and hides behind it. He’s considered his position on the whole thing, but hasn’t  _ reconsidered _ it, as it were. Brian glances at Paul across the table -- they’ve all known one another long enough to see that John should speak first. Anything but that might cause undesired confrontation. 

“Hmm,” John hums from behind the newspaper. Both Paul and Brian go stock-still. “Looks like those men were released last night,” he says. He folds the paper in half, sets it down in the middle of the table and points out the article that’s been written about the incident. “Looks like marching on that police station worked,” he observes. 

Paul hadn’t noticed the article. Sighing, he reaches out for the paper and scans it. It’s written relatively positively, actually. As though the incident shouldn’t have happened in the first place. It’s small, but it feels like a victory, somehow. “That’s good,” he mutters. 

John scoffs, mumbles: “Is it, now?”

“I put you in that car, John,” Brian says, his voice stronger than Paul had thought it might be. John’s eyes flicker up towards him; he looks no less angry about that fact than he did last night. “It happened so quickly, Paul didn’t even know the details until we’d arrived back here.”

“I said they’d needed help,” John hisses. “That should have been enough. Instead he’s done nothing, same as you.”

“He’s --” Brian starts, though Paul cuts him. He knows Brian means to tell John about the cheque about the bar owner, but Paul doesn’t want him to. It isn’t the point, anyway.

“We can do things different ways, John,” Paul says over him. “We need to find different ways to do something. We’d have had every camera in our faces last night, and nobody would have cared about what those men were trying to do.”

“We could have helped make the bastards listen,” John challenges, leaning across the table. And he’s right, of course he’s right, but Paul suddenly wonders how that conversation would go. Someone would be bound to ask  _ why _ they should care. The  _ why _ for Paul would be obvious, but it wouldn’t be for John, and he’d have to explain the why. 

“And what would we have said, aye?” Paul asks him. “What would  _ you _ have said when they ask us why we’re there, why we even bother?” John sees what he’s accusing him and it makes him go stiff with anger. John’s afraid, but he’s most afraid of the fact that he  _ can’t say it _ . 

“That I’ve got a poor queer friend to stick up for,” John says back harshly, though Paul knows he doesn’t really mean anything by it. It’s just macho part winning, is all. 

“They don’t need you waffling,” Paul tells him. He isn’t hurt by what John’s said, like John had intended, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t angry about it either. John sets his jaw and just watches him, waits for what comes next. “If you’d been there, that story,” Paul says, jabbing his finger down on the newspaper between them, “would have been about whether or not  _ you _ , John Lennon, had ever dipped your toe into queer sex and less about the men who were arrested for something that shouldn’t even be illegal anymore.”

“So, what?” John asks. “I should just shut up about it because I’m not out like you? You go queer three months ago and suddenly you’re an expert --”

“John…” Brian warns. 

“No,” John insists. “We’ve been at this for years, Brian. You like him coming in and telling you what to do? How to be queer the right way?” He allows Brian a moment to answer, but when he doesn’t, John just petulantly adds: “Well, I don’t.”

“I’m not trying to tell you --”

“You  _ are _ ,” John insists. “You  _ always _ have been.”

That settles between them, and it makes them both sadder than it ought to. He hears John, asking him to do this his way, and Paul doing the exact opposite. He hears himself telling John he can’t have it quiet, so John would have to meet him halfway, rather than the other way around. He hears himself telling John:  _ I’m ready to be with you, so you should be ready to be with me _ . 

“John --”

“It’s shite,” John gripes and he stands before Paul can tell him that he’s sorry. He watches him stride back towards his bedroom. He doesn’t shut the door on them this time, but Paul hears him start to bat away at his acoustic. It’s angry and caustic, the exact way that rock and roll ought to be. 

He doesn’t come out, not even when Paul and Brian each go to their rooms to get dressed for the meeting with  _ Capitol _ . Once they’re both ready, looking sharp, they keep their eyes on one another, both firmly aware of the presence in the third bedroom, still quietly tinkering on his guitar. Paul knows he ought to be the one to talk to him. 

Gingerly, he knocks at the door jamb. John’s hunkered on the edge of the bed, his back to the doorway. He stops playing, but he doesn’t turn to look at him. “John?” Paul tries. 

“What?”

Paul sighs at how gruff he sounds. “Can I come in?”

John finally twists at the middle to see him. He sees him in his suit and his eyes go slightly wide. He glances back at the alarm clock on the nightstand and immediately hops to his feet, setting his guitar down on the mattress. “Oh, Christ,” he mutters. “I lost track of time.” He runs his hand through his hair, looking embarrassed, so Paul steps into the room, closer to him, hoping it might calm him down. 

“It’s alright,” he says. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“No,” John says, going to the closet. He keeps his eyes anywhere but on Paul. He’d gone soft right at the end of their argument, Paul sees that he doesn’t like that about himself. “I’ve flown all the way to America for this, I’m not skipping out on it, now.”

“Okay,” Paul manages, though he can’t quite seem to move. 

Once John has his shirt and jacket out, once they’re laid out on the bed in front of him, he pauses. He glances up at Paul and says: “I’m sorry I fought with you.”

“That’s alright, too --”

“You’re right, you know,” he mutters, his cheeks going rosy. “That I wouldn’t have copped to it if I’d gone and some reporter asked me why I was there. I still would have lied.” Paul shakes his head, hates that he’s needled this thread when it was still so sore. “I don’t know why I can’t say it, but I can’t.”

Paul thinks of Mimi Smith and knows exactly why. John had grown up surrounded by people whose love was conditional, people who were more likely to leave than love back. “You don’t have to,” Paul promises him. “You’ve told the people that matter.” John shakes his head, like that doesn’t  _ mean something _ . Like loving Paul despite where he’s come from, despite the horrible things in his head, isn’t an act of bravery. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, but Paul can’t read what exactly he’s apologizing for, though he doesn’t think he likes it. “Will you wait for me?” he asks. “I won’t be long getting dressed.”

“Of course we will,” Paul assures him. 

He’d hug him, if John hadn’t immediately peeled out of his black t-shirt. Paul takes it as his cue to leave. He tugs the door shut behind him, to allow John his privacy. 

\--

“Well,” Brian says at the long conference table in the  _ Capitol _ boardroom. He pours some water from a pitcher for John and Paul, he doesn’t do the same for the American executives. “I suppose we’re most worried about your plan for the album’s promotion, considering the current…” He glances towards Paul, uneasily, apologetically. “ _ Situation _ .” He takes a deep breath and presses on: “Will it be full-force, or nothing at all?”

One of the executives leans back in his seat, stretching his arms up above his head. He shrugs casually and Paul decides he doesn’t understand Americans. 

“I think it’s somewhere down the middle,” the other tells them with a quick smile. He doesn’t sound as though he’s originally from California, but Paul doesn’t know enough about American accents to decide whether or not that’s true. “Treating America like one big organism, I think, is a mistake.” Brian nods, and Paul has to concede that that’s probably true, too. They’d all been surprised at the sheer size and difference of this country the first time they’d toured it. “Here in California,” he says anyway. “We’re different from our fellow citizens in, say…” Now, the executive glances towards Paul, just as uneasy, going for polite. “ _ Kentucky _ .” The choice of state isn’t lost on anyone. “The same way that they’re different from folks in Louisiana, or Washington.”

“Yeah,” John gripes impatiently. “And?”

The execs aren’t impressed. Clearing his throat, Brian sits up a little taller, letting them know exactly who they’re actually dealing with here. John and Paul were just here to be in the peanut gallery. 

The executive returns his attention to Brian and says: “We have to treat them as much. Especially with such  _ delicate matter _ .” Paul feels that make his chest constrict. Beside him, John scoffs and he’s glad one of them is able to make their distaste for  _ that _ euphemism known. “Everyone in the country will know that  _ The Beatles _ are making a new record. Everyone in every country will know that. Some places will just want to hear less about it.” Brian goes terse. He looks like he’d like to ask:  _ why? _ Just to have the man in front of him admit to his reasoning. But it’s their art in these men’s hands. Of course, they’d all still like to see it released, even if it strategically avoided some people. “I think you’ll see the sort of promotion and radio spots that you’re used to in our larger cities,” the exec assures him and that seems to make Brian rest a bit easier. “LA, definitely. New York, Dallas, Seattle.”

“Wherever we’re most palatable?” John asks, butting in again. 

It had been a bit of a jab, but the executive still says: “Yes, that’s right,” as though the insult of it is lost on him. But it isn’t, not really. Paul sees John realize that just as he does. It’s just the truth. They don’t want to make a statement. They don’t mean to offer support or protection. They just mean to make the most money they can off of people who will still be willing to listen to a queer rock group. 

Paul realizes he doesn’t feel hated by these men in front of him, he just feels as though they’re indifferent to him, beyond the hits he can write for them. It isn’t any better than being hated. In some ways, it’s worse, because they’re here in front of him,  _ smiling _ at him, but they’d toss him to the hounds as soon as they realize that that willing audience would become smaller and smaller as soon as they actually hear the  _ songs _ on the album. The people who hate him, they never made him feel as though he should remove the song he’d written for John off the album. But these men in front of him just have. And that frightens him. 

“Well, maybe we don’t want the money from the other states, anyroad,” John offers, though it doesn’t come out quite as fortified as he’d hoped it would. Paul smiles at him meekly, meaning to tell him  _ thank you _ , but they’re beaten, and they can’t make that feel better. The executives laugh, as though  _ not wanting _ money were the strangest thing they’d ever heard. But Paul decides to dwell on the truth of it. 

He  _ doesn’t _ want the money, and he  _ doesn’t _ want to take out his song. All he wants is to play his music and to have it reach someone, somewhere. He’s done that; he’s made enough money to continue doing that on his own, without the executives. It suddenly strikes him what less promotion actually means: less questions, less fans, less fame, less  _ everything _ … He glances at John. Less everything, but each other. 

“Or,” John says, kicking his foot gently against the leg of Paul’s chair, and Paul realizes he’s just gone the other direction. His eyes are bright and excited behind his glasses. He leans towards Paul, as though they’re only two people in the room and says: “We give them an album they can’t ignore.” Paul feels something burst in his chest. He thinks, if these  _ Capitol _ executives were going to promote them less, stop helping them until they were nothing; if  _ this _ was going to be the last album they would ever be remembered by, then  _ yes _ , it should be one that nobody can ignore. 

The idea ignites something inside of him, something competitive and driven. It’s been ignited in John, too. It makes him feel as though they’re sixteen again, having just written their first song together, brashly  _ knowing _ that they were on the cusp of something huge. 

\--

Back in the recording booth at EMI Studios, John finishes scribbling down on a scrap piece of paper, then holds it up for the rest of the band to see. George Martin is there, too. He leans in to read it. 

“This is the album,” John declares. Everyone but Paul comes to realize it’s a tracklist, he’s already known the plan. Trimmed down to a single. Geo snatches it from John’s hand and studies it. Every song is the best they’ve ever done. It’s relentless. George has got two and they’ve kept Paul’s song for John, too. He smiles, then hands off the scrap paper to Ringo, who looks just as excited.  “All in favour?” John asks the room. 

George and Rings mutter in obvious agreement, raising hands as a yes. George Martin looks at them all and very emphatically raises his hand up over his head. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I didn’t know this, but The Homosexual’s Handbook is a real book that was published in 1968 (which month, I don’t know, I’m pretending it’s April) that did actually list Paul as a “practicing homosexual”. I was trying to get my hands on an e-copy to see what it actually said, but all I could find was a German translation, so it’s a bit broken telephone. But basically, the author listed a bunch of celebrities that were proven to have had homosexual experiences/relationships and when he listed Paul, he added in brackets: “though that might just be wishful thinking on the author’s part”, or something to that effect. I’m ignoring that second bit because it just planted a story in my head. I don’t know if anyone has been outed, but it’s a horrible, horrible thing, and I guess I wanted to be a little self-indulgent lmao and write some sort of reclamation/redemption story for someone who’s been forced to live their truth before they’re ready to do so.
> 
> As it’s my MO, there will be some heavy subjects here, some serious angst, but underneath it all, a story about growth and acceptance, and I swear it’ll end happily. I always offer a happy ending haha
> 
> Please also be aware that i’m back at work full-time after the lockdown these days, so fic writing will obviously take a big ole backseat to real life. i’ve been writing nonstop during the lockdown so i’ve been able to update pretty frequently; that will just straight up not be the case here tbh. Worst case, I have tons of time off in December so I hope to finish everything before the New Year. This also feels shorter than my other long fics but God knows i’m pure shit at guessing how long any of my stuff will be haha 
> 
> This being 8 chapters is a total guess on my part, I just hate the '?' option haha I feel like it will be more than 8, but who knows, certainly not me. I have the first four chapters fully outlined, so I imagine it will be at least double that? We shall all see!
> 
> So enjoy! But be patient! i’m motivated to not let any of my wips go unfinished!
> 
> Also, join me on tumblr @orphanbeat! It's always a way lighter vibe there, my friends!


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